“Save-my-life sort of thing?”
“Well, save you some anxiety or discomfort at the least. But you were the one passenger on the ship who didn’t suffer the one or the other.”
(Ah, he didn’t know! And she wasn’t going to tell him. Oh, dear, no!)
“I go to see about your baggage. It’s checked, and on the ship. I curry favor with the captain, so as to get you a seat at the first table. You’ve got one for yourself.”
“No. I didn’t.”
“Well, whoever got it, you sit in it. Same thing on deck. While I’m looking for a sheltered place for your chair you are established. I bring special provisions to keep you from starvation. You are somehow as well supplied and with as exactly the right things as though you’d made the trip twenty times.”
“It was the Blumpittys,” Hildegarde began.
“The whattatys? Never mind. Call it any name you like. I couldn’t have promised you new-laid eggs every morning for breakfast a thousand miles from land. I could only hang about ready to save you from unpleasantness. But, God bless me, unpleasantness never comes within a league of you.”
“The purser,” Hildegarde prompted, with a gleam of eye.