At this point in Sylvia's contemplation Lottie woke up and prepared for the arrival of the train at Bucharest by making her toilet.
"Where's the best place to stay?" Sylvia inquired.
"Well, the best place to stay is in some hotel," Lottie replied. "But the hotels are so horribly expensive. Of course, there are plenty of pensions d'artistes_, and--" she broke off and looked at Sylvia_ curiously, who asked her why she did so.
"I was thinking that it's a pity you can't share a room together," she said after a momentary hesitation.
"Well, in that case I should go to a small hotel," Lottie advised. "Because all the _pensions_ here are run by old thieves. There's Mère Valérie--she's French and almost the worst of the lot--and there's one kept by a Greek who's not so bad, but they say most of her bedrooms have bugs."
"We'll go to a hotel," Sylvia decided. "Where are you going yourself?"
"Oh, I shall find myself a room somewhere. I don't stand a chance of being engaged at any first-rate cabaret and I sha'n't have much money to spend on rooms. _Entre nous, je ne dis plus rien aux hommes. Je suis trop grasse. À quoi sert une jolie chambre?_"
Sylvia had a feeling that she ought to ask Lottie to share a room with Queenie and herself, and after a struggle against the notion of this fat girl's ungainly presence she keyed herself to the pitch of inviting her.
"No, no," said Lottie. "It wouldn't do for two English girls to live with an Austrian."
Sylvia could not help being relieved at her refusal; perhaps she showed it, for Lottie smiled cynically.
"I think you'll feel a little less charitable to everybody," she said, "before much longer. You've kept out of this war so far, but you won't be able to keep out of it forever. I've often noticed about English girls that they begin by thinking such a lot of themselves that they have quite a store of pity for the poor people who aren't like them; and then all of a sudden they turn round and become very unpleasant; because they discover that other people think themselves as good as they are. Mind you, I'm not saying you'll do that, but I don't want to find myself _de trop_ after being with you a week. Let's part as friends."
Sylvia, in the flurry of arrival, did not pay much attention to Lottie's prophecies, and she was glad to be alone again with Queenie. They discovered a small hotel kept by Italians, which seemed clean and, if they obtained a reasonable salary at the Petit Maxim, not too expensive. When they had dressed themselves up to impress the manager of the cabaret and were starting out to seek an engagement, the wife of the proprietor called Sylvia aside.