n 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."

"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 m