syal! Two of the bloomin' turns not come, and me looking up and
dahn the bloomin' street for you every minute and more!"

The girl's eyes blinked as if he had struck her, but she only tossed her
head and stiffened her under lip, and said: "Jawing again, are ye? I'd
chuck it for once, Charlie, if it was only for sake of company."

With that she disappeared to the dressing-room, and Charlie took charge
of Glory, crushed a way for her through the refreshment room, offered her
a "glaws of somethink," and with an obvious pride of possession
introduced her to admiring acquaintances as "a friend o' mine." "Like yer
style, Charlie," said one of them. "Oh, yus! Dare say!" said Charlie.

The proscenium was surmounted by the German and English flags
intertwined, the walls were adorned with oleograph portraits of the
Kaiser, his father and grandfather, Bismarck and Von Moltke, and the
audience consisted largely of lively young German Jews and Jewesses in
evening dress, some Polish Jews, and a sprinkling of other foreigners.

During Aggie's turn Glory was conscious that two strangers out of another
world altogether had entered the club and were standing at the back.

"Toffs," said Charlie, looking at them over her shoulder, and then,
answering to himself the meaning of their looks, "No, my luds! 'Tain't
the first we've seen of sech!"

Then Aggie came up with an oily person in a flowered waistcoat and said,
"This is my friend, guv'nor, and she wouldn't mind doing a turn if you
asked her."

"If de miss vill oblige," began the oily one, and then the blood rushed
to Glory's face, and before she knew what else had happened, her hat and
ulster were in Aggie's hands and she was walking up the steps to the
stage.

There was some applause when she went on, but she was in a dazed
condition and it all seemed to be taking place a hundred miles away. She
heard her own voice saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, with your kind
permission I will endeavour to give you an imitation----" and something
more. Down to that moment her breath had been coming and going in hot
gasps, and she had felt a dryness in her throat; but every symptom of
nervousness suddenly disappeared, and she threw up her head like a
charger in battle.

Then she sang. It was only a common street song, and everybody had heard
it a thousand times. She sang "And her golden hair was hanging down her
back" after the manner of a line of factory girls going home from work at
night. A