Also, things like "came her petite voice" and "he grinned" draw the focus of the reader to the dialogue tags, and can easily distract from how solid your dialogue actually is. "he said", "she said" are standard because they become invisible to the reader, but can become instantly useful if the reader has become lost in the dialogue. I'll have to read it again to see if it's far too noticeable, but it's usually good to assume that it is.
It may just be because it's 1am over here, or just because I'm stupid, but I'm finding the last bit a wee bit unclear. To my understanding, what you're saying is : first sentence, from what I gather, is saying using "came her petite voice" breaks the flow of conversation, and that using "he said, she said" works better because it doesn't break said flow?
I am sometimes not as clear as I'd like. This is a weakness in my own writing.
Yes, that's kind of what I was saying, but it's not really the flow that's the reason. Your flow might need a little bit of work as well, but this is more about what is grabbing the attention of the reader. I probably would have wrote it more like this:
"It's unlike you to be this quiet," she said to Brown. "Shouldn't you be up having the ladies fall about your feet?"
It identifies who she is talking to without putting it in the dialogue, and the dialogue attribution ["she said to brown"] doesn't make itself stand out as the important thing to read in the sentence. It gives the same information but at a lower priority. The important thing that she's trying to say is that Brown should be out having a good time.
You see, whenever a reader has to stop and read something with their conscious mind, that thing should be what you're trying to tell them about. People don't actually read "he said" or "she said" consciously, it's more of a "back of the mind" thing. It gives context, but it never jumps out. When you use other words to do the same thing, the brain has to stop assuming they are "he said/she said", and actually read them.