"But what are you going to do?" he went on.
"Oh, I don't know," said Sylvia, curtly. "Leave things to arrange themselves, I suppose."
"Yes, that's a very good attitude to take up when your desk is untidy, but, seriously, I shouldn't advise you to leave things to arrange themselves by touring round Rumania. These provincial towns are wretched holes."
"What's Avereshti like?"
"I don't know. I've never been there. It's not likely to be any better than Galantza or Bralatz, except for being a good deal nearer to Bucharest. Oh dear! everything's very gloomy. That Suvla business will keep out the Rumanians for some time. In fact, I don't think myself they'll ever come in now, unless they come in with the Germans. Why don't you take a week's holiday here?"
But the vice-consul, who had seemed agreeable at first, was getting on Sylvia's nerves with his admiration for Queenie, and she told him that they should leave next day.
"Too bad," he exclaimed. "But that's the way of the world. When a consul would like to be thoroughly bothered by somebody, nothing will induce that person to waste five minutes of his precious time. Your friend Maud, on the contrary, haunted me like a bluebottle."
Avereshti turned out to be a much smaller place than Sylvia had expected. She had heard it spoken of in Bucharest as a favorite summer resort, and had pictured it somehow with a casino, gardens, good hotels, and pretty scenery: the very name had appealed to her with a suggestion of quietude. She had deliberately not gone there at once with Queenie when they left Bucharest because, being not more than sixty kilometers from the capital, she had had an idea that Zozo might think it a likely place for them to visit and take it into his head to seek them out. Even in the train coming back from Galantza she had doubts of the wisdom of turning on their tracks so soon; but their taste of Galantza and Bralatz had been so displeasing that Avereshti with its prefigured charm of situation promised a haven with which the risk of being worried by their enemy could not interfere. They would take a week's holiday before engaging themselves to appear at the casino or whatever the home of amusement was called in Avereshti; then after a short engagement they might perhaps venture back to Bucharest and start saving up money again.
"For what good?" Queenie asked, sadly.
"Oh, something will turn up," Sylvia replied. "Perhaps the war will come to a sudden end, and you'll be able to go to England without a passport."