"Excuse me getting up to shake hands," said Krebs, in excellent English. "But this furniture is too luxurious."
He was lying back, smoking a cigarette in an armchair all the legs of which were missing and the rest of it covered with exudations of flocculence that resembled dingy cauliflowers. Sylvia saw that he was a large man with a large undefined face of dark complexion. He offered a huge hand, brutal and clumsy in appearance, an inappropriate hand for a juggler, she thought, vaguely. His companion, crudely colored and shapeless as a quilt, sprawled on another chair. Everything about this woman was defiant; her harsh accent, the feathers in her hat, her loose mouth, her magenta cheeks, her white boa, and her white boots affronted the world like an angry housemaid.
"This is a fine hole, this Rumania," she shrilled. "Gawd! I went to the English consul at Galantza, expecting to be treated with a little consideration, and the —— pushed me out of his office. Yes, we read a great deal about England nowadays, but I've been better treated by everybody than what I have by the English. Stuck-up la-di-da set of ——, that's what they are, and anybody as likes can hear me say so."
She raised her voice for the benefit of the listeners without that might be waiting anxiously upon her words.
"Don't kick up such a row," Krebs commanded; but Maud paid no attention to him and went on.
"England! Yes, I left England ten years ago, and if it wasn't for my poor old mother I'd never go back. Treat you as dirt, that's what the English do. That consul threw me out of his office the same as a commissionnaire might throw any old two-and-four out of the Empire. Yes, they talk a lot about patriotism and all pulling one way, but when you ask a consul to lend you the price of your fare to Bucharest, you don't hear no more about patriotism. As I said to him, 'I suppose you don't think I'm English?' and he sat there grinning for answer. Yes, I reckon when they christened that talking chimpanzee at the Hippodrome 'Consul' it was done by somebody who'd had a bit of consul in his time. What's a consul for? That's what I'm asking. As I said to him, 'What are you for? Are you paid,' I said, 'to sit there smoking cigarettes for the good of your country?' 'This ain't a workhouse,' he answered, very snotty. 'You're right,' I said. 'No fear about any one ever making that mistake. Why, I reckon it's a bloody sleeping-car, I do.' And with that I slung my hook out of it. Yes, I could have been very rude to him; only it was beneath me, the uneducated la-di-da savage! Well, all he's done is to put me against my own country. That's his war work."
The tirade exhausted itself, and Sylvia, unwilling to be Maud's sponsor at the Petit Trianon that evening, made some excuse to leave. While she was walking across the courtyard with Lottie, she heard:
"And who's she? I'll have to tell her off, that's very plain. Did you see the way she looked down her nose at me? Nice thing if any one can't say what they think of a consul without being stared at like a mummy by her."
Sylvia asked Lottie if she had known this couple long.
"I've known him a year or two, but she's new. I met them coming up from the railway station this morning. The girl was stranded without any money at Galantza, and Krebs brought her on here. He's a fine juggler and conjurer. Zozo he calls himself on the stage."