it. It did not seem to me remarkably pretty. But Nat said one
day, when I told him so,--

"'It isn't the picture itself, but what I want to make from it. Don't you
see that the trees look a little like dancers whirling round, holding each
other by the hand--one-legged dancers?'

"I could not see it. 'Well,' said Nat, 'look at this, and see if you can
see it any better;' and he drew out of his portfolio a sheet with a rough
charcoal sketch of six or seven low, gnarled, bare trees, with their
boughs inter-locked in such a fantastic manner that the trees seemed
absolutely reeling about in a crazy dance. I laughed as soon as I saw it.
'There!' said Nat triumphantly; 'now, if I can only get the vines to go
just as I want them to, in and out, you see that will dress up the
dancers.' He worked long over this design. The fancy seemed to have taken
possession of his brain. He gave names to the trees, but he called them
all men: 'It's a jolly crew of old kings,' he said; 'that's Sesostris at
the head, and there's Herod; that old fellow with the gouty stomach under
his left arm.' Nat was now so full of freaks and fun, that our little room
rang with laughter night after night. Patrick used to sit on the floor
sometimes, with his broad Irish mouth stiffened into a perpetual grin at
the sight of the mirth, which, though he could not comprehend it, he found
contagious.

"'But what will you do with it, Nat?' said I. 'It will never do for a
calico pattern.'

"'I don't know,' said he reflectively; 'I might make it smaller and hide
the faces, and not make the limbs of the trees look so much like legs, and
call it the "vine pattern," and I guess old Wilkins would think it was
graceful, and I dare say Miss Wilkins would wear it, if nobody else did.'

"'Oh! Nat, Nat, how can you,' exclaimed I, 'when they have been so good to
pay us so much money?'

"'I know it,' said Nat, 'it's too bad; I'm ashamed now. But doesn't this
look like the two Wilkins brothers? You said they looked like frogs?' he
ran on, holding up a most ludicrous picture of two tall, lank frogs
standing behind a counter, and stretching out four front legs like greedy
hands across the counter, with a motto coming out of the right-hand frog's
mouth: 'More designs, if you please, Mr. Kent--something light and
graceful for summer wear.'

"These were the words of a note which Mr. Wilkins had sent to Nat a few
weeks before. I laughed till the tears ran down my cheeks, for real