"He was really being very nice to me," Queenie said. "Oh, Sylvia, what shall I do? I cannot be staying here with these girls who are so unkind to me."
The following evening Sylvia asked Zozo straight out about the kind of passport he proposed to find for Queenie and where he proposed to take her.
The juggler sneered.
"That's my business, I think. What can you do for her? If the kid's anything, she's German. What the hell's the good of you trying to make her English? Why don't you let her alone instead of stopping her from earning good money?"
Sylvia kept her temper with a great effort and contented herself with denying that Queenie was German and with asking who had first made the assertion. The juggler spat on the floor and walked away without replying.
After the performance that night, a hot, thunderous night in August, Zozo, with Maud and two well-known pro-German natives, took the next table to Sylvia and Queenie. Maud was drinking heavily and presently she began to talk in a loud voice:
"Well, I may have spoken against England once or twice, but, thank Gawd, I'm not a bloody little yellow-haired German pretending to be English. I never went and tried to pass off a dirty little German as my sister the same as what some people who's proud of being English does. Yes, I earn my living honestly. I've never heard any one call me a spy, and any —— as did wouldn't do it twice. My name's Maud Moffat, born and bred a cockney, and proud I am when I see some people who think theirselves superior and all the time is dirty German spies betraying their country. Does any one presume to say I'm not English?" she shouted, rising unsteadily to her feet. "And if he does, where is he so as I can show him he's a bloody liar by breaking his head open?"
Her companions made a pretense of restraining her, but it was plain that they were enjoying the scene, and Maud continued to hold forth.
"German! And calls herself English. Goes round giving presents to honest working-girls so as she can carry on her dirty work of spying. Goes round trying to get a girl's boy away from her by low, dirty, mean tricks as she's learnt from the bloody Germans who she belongs to. Yes, it's you I'm talking to," she shrieked at Queenie.
White as paper, she sprang up from her seat and began to answer Maud, notwithstanding Sylvia's efforts to silence her.