“A few days after this Nat had finished a set of designs ’for summer wear,’ as the order said, and among them he had put in the ’One-Legged Dancers.’

“‘It’ll do no harm to try it,’ said he.  ’I think it would be lovely printed in bright-green on a white ground, and nobody but you and me would ever see the kings’ legs in it.’

“It really was pretty; still I could not help seeing legs and heads and King Herod’s stomach in it; and, moreover, it was entirely too large a figure for that year’s fashions in calico or muslin.  However, I said nothing and carried it with the rest.  When I went the next day, Mr. Wilkins said, as he handed me the money,—­

“’Oh, by the way, Miss Kent, one of the drawings has been mislaid.  I suppose it is of no consequence; we could not use it; it was quite too large a figure, and seemed less graceful than your brother’s work usually is; it was a picture of grape-vines.’

“‘Oh,’ said I, ’I told Nat I didn’t believe that would be good for anything.  No, it is not of the least consequence.’

“When I repeated this to Nat, he did not seem surprised at their refusal of the design; they had already refused several others in the course of the year.  But he seemed singularly disturbed at the loss of the drawing.  At last he urged me to go and ask if it had not been found.

“‘I may do something with it yet, Dot,’ he said.  ’I know it is a good design for something, if not for calico, and I don’t believe they have lost it.  It is very queer.’

“But Mr. Wilkins assured me, with great civility and many expressions of regret, that the design was lost:  that they had made careful search for it everywhere.

“The thing would have passed out of my mind in a short time but for Nat’s pertinacious reference to it.  Every few days he would say, ’It is very queer, Dot, about the One-Legged Dancers.  How could such a thing be lost?  They never lost a drawing before.  I believe Miss Wilkins has got it, and is going to paint a big picture from it herself!’

“‘Why, Nat!’ I exclaimed, ‘aren’t you ashamed? that would be stealing.’

“‘I don’t care, Dot,’ he said again and again, ’I never shall believe that paper was lost.’

“I grew almost out of patience with him; I never knew him to be unjust to any one, and it grieved me that he should be so to people who had been our benefactors.

“About four months later, one warm day in April, I walked over to the town after my day’s work was done, to buy a gown for myself, and a new box of paints for Nat.  I did not go to town more than two or three times a year, and the shop-windows delighted me as much as if I had been only eleven years old.  As I walked slowly up and down, looking at everything, I suddenly started back at the sight of a glossy green and white chintz, which was displayed conspicuously in the central window of one of the largest shops.  There they were, just as Nat had drawn them on the