The Miracle Man. Frank L. Packard

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СКАЧАТЬ said the Flopper, with perfect complacence.

      "Glad it pleases you," smiled Doc Madison, "Here's your lay, then. You've got to remember that you were born crooked and—"

      Helena giggled.

      "I didn't mean it"—Doc Madison's gray eyes twinkled. "You are waking up, too, Helena. I mean, Flopper, you've got to remember that you were born twisted up into the same shape you are in when you hit Needley. You come from—let's see—we'll have to have a big city where the next door neighbors pass each other with a vacant stare. Ever been in Chicago?"

      "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?"

      "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 rôle, 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 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!" СКАЧАТЬ