"'So your lame brother drew these designs, did he, Miss Dora?'
"'My brother Nat drew them, sir; I have but one brother, said I, trying hard to speak civilly.
"'Well' said he, 'they are really very well done--quite remarkable, considering that they are the work of a child who has had no instruction; they would have to be rearranged and altered before we could use them, but we would like to encourage him and to help you too,' he continued, patronizingly, 'and so we shall buy them just as they are.'
"'My brother Nat is not a child,' replied I, 'and we do not wished to be helped. If the designs are not worth money, will you be so good as to give them back to me?' and I stepped nearer the desk and stretched out my hand toward the pictures which were lying there. But Agent Wilkins snatched them up quickly, and casting an angry glance at his brother, exclaimed:--
"'Oh, you quite mistake my brother, Miss Kent; the designs are worth money and we are glad to buy them; but they are not worth so much as they would be if done by an experienced hand. We will give you ten dollars for the three,' and he held out the money to me. Involuntarily I exclaimed, 'I had not dreamed that they would be worth so much.' Nat could earn then in four hours' work as much as I could in a week; in that one moment the whole of life seemed thrown open for us. All my distrust vanished. And when the agent added, kindly, 'Be sure and bring us all the designs which your brother makes. I think we shall want to buy as many as he will draw; he certainly has rare talent,'--I could have fallen on the floor at his feet to thank him, so grateful did I feel for this new source of income for us, and still more for the inexpressible pleasure for my poor Nat.
"From that day Nat was a changed boy. He would not go to school in the afternoons, but spent the hours from two till five in drawing. I had a cord arranged from our room to Miss Penstock's, so that he could call her if at any moment he needed help, and she was only too glad to have him in the house. When I reached home at six, I always found him lying back in his chair with his work spread out before him, and such a look of content and joy on his face, that more than once it made me cry instead of speaking when I bent over to kiss him. 'Oh, Dot--oh, Dot!' he used to say sometimes, 'it isn't all for the sake of the money, splendid as that is; but I do feel as if I should yet do something much better than making designs for calicoes. I feel it growing in me. Oh, if I could only be taught; if there were only some one here who could tell me about the things I don't understand!'
"'But you shall be taught, dear,' I replied; 'we will lay up all the money you earn. I can earn enough for us to live on, and then, with your money, in a few years we can certainly contrive some way for you to study.'
"It seemed not too visionary a hope, for Nat's designs grew prettier and prettier, and the agent bought all I carried him. One week I remember he paid me thirty dollars; and as he 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.