"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.