“Naw!  Wot fer?” said the Flopper, with withering spontaneity.  “Noo Yoik fer mine.”

“Well, all right—­New York it is, then,” agreed Doc Madison.  “You’re poor, but respectable—­and that brings us to the other point.  Before you go down there, Helena’s going to start a little night-school with a grammar, and teach you to paddle along the fringe of the great American language so’s you won’t fall in and get wet all over every time you open your mouth.”

“My!” exclaimed Helena.  “Won’t that be nice!”

“I hope so,” said Doc Madison drily.  “And don’t run away with the idea that I’m joking about this—­that goes.  I don’t expect to make a silver-tongued orator out of you, Flopper, and perhaps not even a purist—­but I hope to eradicate a few minor touches of Bad Land vernacular from your vocabulary.”

“I’ve gotcher—­swipe me!” grinned the Flopper.  “Me at school!  Say, wouldn’t that put a smile on de maps of de harness bulls, an’ de dips, an’ de lags doin’ spaces up de river!”

“Quite so,” admitted Doc Madison pleasantly.

“You won’t laugh when I get through with you,” remarked Helena, her eyes on the curl of smoke from her cigarette.

“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?”