"Yes, slightly."
"Well, what do you think of that? He's a great old party, isn't he?" He chuckled irrepressibly. "Did you ever hear him swear?"
The woman shook her head with a smile. "I hardly know him well enough for that."
"Oh, he's a free performer; he swears naturally; can't help it.
Everybody knows he doesn't mean anything. It's funny, isn't it, with
all his credit, that I can't get a shirt until I put up a diamond ring?
He could buy a railroad with half that security."
"You are joking, are you not?"
"No indeed. I never needed a shirt so badly in my life. You see, I didn't intend to take this trip; I didn't even know I had sailed. When I woke up I thought this was a hotel. I've got no more baggage than a robin."
"Really?" The woman by now had closed her book and was giving him her full attention, responding to some respectful quality in his tone that robbed his frankness of offence. "How did it happen?"
"Well, to be perfectly honest, I got drunk—just plain drunk. I didn't think so at the time, understand, for I'd never been the least bit that way before. Hope I don't shock you?"
His new acquaintance shrugged her shoulders. "I have seen something of the world; I'm not easily shocked."
"Well, I was perfectly sober the last I remember, and then I woke up on the Santa Cruz. I'd never even heard the name before."