handed it to me, seeing how pleased I
looked, he said,--

"'Your brother is getting quite rich, is he not, Miss Kent?' Something
sinister in his smile struck me at that moment as it had not done for a
long time, and I resolved to go more seldom to the office.

"We did not lay up so much as we hoped to; we neither of us had a trace of
the instinct of economy or saving. I could not help buying a geranium or
fuchsia to set in the windows; Nat could not help asking me to buy a book
or a picture sometimes, and his paints and pencils and brushes and paper
cost a good deal in the course of six months. Still we were very happy and
very comfortable, and the days flew by. Our little room was so cozy and
pretty, that Miss Penstock's customers used often to come in to see it;
and if they happened to come when Nat was there, they almost always sent
him something afterward; so, at the end of two years you never would have
known the bare little room. We had flowers in both windows, and as each
window had sun, the flowers prospered; and we had a great many pretty
pictures on the walls, and Nat's sketches pinned up in all sorts of odd
places. A big beam ran across the ceiling in the middle, and that was
hung full of charcoal sketches, with here and there a sheet just painted
in bars of bright color--no meaning to them, except to 'light up,' Nat
said. I did not understand him then, but I could see how differently all
the rest looked after the scarlet and yellow were put by their side. Some
of our pictures had lovely frames to them, which Nat had carved out of old
cigar-boxes that Patrick brought him. Sometimes he used to do nothing but
carve for a week, and he would say, 'Dot, I do not believe drawing is the
thing I want to do, after all. I want more; I hate to have everything
flat.' Then he would get discouraged and think all he had done was good
for nothing. 'I never can do anything except to draw till I go somewhere
to be taught,' he would say, and turn back to the old calico patterns with
fresh zeal.

"One day a customer of Miss Penstock's brought Nat a book about grapes,
which had some pictures of the different methods of grape-culture in
different countries. One of these pictures pleased him very much. It
showed the grape-vines looped on low trees, in swinging festoons. He had
the book propped up open at that picture day after day, and kept drawing
it over and over on the blackboard and on paper till I was tired of the
sight of