"Oh!" said Helena--and her eyes were on the curl of smoke from her cigarette again. "Say," said Pale Face Harry suddenly, evidently still worried about his cough, "we ain't going to have no easy cinch of this." "No," said Doc Madison, with a grim smile; "you're not! It's going to be the hardest work any of you have ever done--you've got to lead decent lives for awhile." "Sure--dat's right," said the loyal Flopper; "but we stands fer anyt'ing dat de Doc says--an' dat goes!" "It'll come hard on some of us," remarked Pale Face Harry, with a sly glance at Helena, which met with contemptuous silence. Doc Madison leaned back, felt carefully at his carefully adjusted tie--and smiled engagingly. "Well?" he asked. "Can you see them coming?" Pale Face Harry stared at him with a far-away expression in his eyes. "When we get through with this, if I ain't handed in my checks before," he said dreamily, "it's mine for a brownstone on the Avenue, and one of them life-size landscapes with a shack on it for the season down to Pa'm Beach that they call country cottages. I'll dress the ginks that scrub the horses down in solid gold braid, and put the corpse of chamber ladies in Irish lace--I bust into society, marry a duke's one and only, and swipe her coronet for my manly brow. Did you ask me anything, Doc?" "Swipe me!" said the Flopper. "Me in me private Pullman in a plush seat an' anudder to put me feet in, an' me thumbs in de armholes of me vest. I wears a high polished lid an' a red tie, an' scatters simoleans outer de window in me travels to the gazaboes on de platforms as I pass--an' den I joins Tammany Hall so's I can stick me fingers to me nose every time I sees a cop." "Flopper," said Doc Madison in an awed voice, "the honor is all mine." Helena went off into a peal of rippling, silvery, contagious laughter, and her little heels again beat an exuberant tattoo on the end of the couch. "Yes?" invited Doc Madison, smiling at her. "I'm seeing them coming," said Helena--and one heel went through the cretonne upholstery of the couch. "Good!" said Doc Madison--and from the inside pocket of his coat he pulled out a package of crisp, new, yellow-backed bills. "You understand that down there none of you ever heard of each other or of me before, and you drop the 'doc'--bury it! My name is John G. Madison--G. for Garfield." His fingers passed deftly over the edges of the bills. He pushed a little pile toward the Hopper, another toward Pale Face Harry, and tucked the remainder into his coat pocket again. "That'll do for expenses," he said. "And now, if you understand everything, principally that you're to go to church Sundays till you hear from me, and you're quite satisfied with the lay, we'll adjourn, _sine die_, to Needley." Helena was holding out a very dainty hand, with pink, wiggling fingers. "I'll need, oh, ever so much more than they will," she declared, with a bewitching pout. "And, please, I'm waiting very patiently." Doc Madison laughed.