"I apologize for the indignity, Miss, but with your wounded ankle, having you ride piggyback is the quickest way for me to carry you to safety before those hoodlums downstairs can catch up with us. Hold on tight!" "Don't worry, Doc. I'm willing to cling tightly to you for as long as necessary!"

Doc Savage, one of the larger-than-life pulp heroes from the Nineteen Thirties and Forties, finds himself having to rescue yet another damsel in distress. I think he's going to take a running start and leap to the next rooftop over, and so forth. Naturally, he's a little embarrassed by a situation where he has to carry a grown woman as if she were a small child. Oddly enough, she doesn't seem to mind . . .