ly the
frogs did look like the brothers Wilkins. The picture haunted my mind for
weeks afterward, and seemed somehow to revive my old distrust of them.

"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
ben