"There's just one more thing," went on Doc Madison, "and I'm through with you, Flopper. Don't come down there looking like a skate--that's too raw. Get new clothes and a shave--and keep shaved. And from the minute you buy your ticket, you keep your bones, or whatever a beneficent nature has given you in place of them, out of joint--see?" "I'm hip," declared the Flopper--and the dog-like admiration for Doc Madison burned in his eyes. "Say, Doc, youse are de--" "Never mind, Flopper," Madison cut in brightly. "It's getting late. Now, Harry, about you. You've got a name, I believe. Evans, isn't it? Yes--well, that will do. Now, don't kill yourself at it, but the more you work your dope needle overtime before you start, and the harder you cough when you first land there the better. We've got to have variety, you know. You're a physical wreck with the folks back home sending the casket and trimmings after you on the next train in care of the station agent." "I guess," coughed Pale Face Harry, with a sickly smile, "I look the part." "You certainly do," said Helena cheerfully, beating a tattoo with her heels on the end of the couch. Pale Face Harry scowled. "I ain't no artist with the paint," he sniffed. "I don't paint," said Helena sweetly. "It's rouge." "Are you through?" inquired Doc Madison patiently. "Because, if you are, I'll go on. When the train whistles for Needley, Harry, you put the soft pedal on the dope--that ought to help some. And then you begin to taper that cough off and become a cure--that's all." "I ain't like the Flopper," said Pale Face Harry ruefully. "I told you once I can't stop the hack, and I ask you again how'm I going to?" "Have faith in the Patriarch," suggested Helena innocently. "You close your trap!" exclaimed Pale Face Harry savagely; then, to Madison: "Go on, Doc--it's up to you." "No," said Doc Madison coolly, "it's up to you. You've got to try, and if you can't stop altogether you can make yourself scarce when you feel the fit coming on--you won't have to climb up on the grandstand and cough in people's faces, will you?" "He might carry a screen around with him and cough behind that," volunteered Helena. "That's enough about the Flopper and Pale Face--what about muh? Where do I get off?" "You?" said Doc Madison calmly. "Oh, you're a moral neurasthenic." "And what's that when it's at home?" demanded Helena sharply. Doc Madison threw out his hands in a comically helpless, impotent gesture. "It's what we need to keep up the standard of variety," he said. "We're playing to the masses. Don't you like the role, Helena--it's the leading woman's." "What do I do?" countered Helena non-committingly. "Do?" echoed Doc Madison. "Why, you go down there like a whole parade and a gorgeous pageant rolled into one, in feathers and paint and diamond boulders in your ears--and you come out of it in a gingham apron and coy sunbonnet as sweet sixteen."