"'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 missing paper, 'The One-Legged Dancers!' Nat was right. It was a pretty pattern, a very pretty pattern for a chintz; and there was--I laughed out in spite of myself, as I stood in the crowd on the sidewalk--yes, there was the ugly great knot in one of the trees which had made King Herod's stomach. But what did it mean? No chintzes were made in any of Mr. Maynard's mills, nor, so far as I knew, in any mill in that neighborhood. I was hot with indignation. Plainly Nat's instinct had been a true one. The Wilkinses had stolen the design and had sold it to some other manufacturers, not dreaming that the theft could ever be discovered by two such helpless children as Nat and I. "I went into the shop and asked the price of the chintz in the window.