[Illustration: "HOPE CAROLINA, FROM HER MARVELOUS BED, COULD SEE
EVERYTHING THAT WAS GOING ON IN THE RADICAL JUDGE'S GARDEN"]

[Illustration: "FOREVER TURNING BACK TO KISS HIM, WITH HER HANDS FULL
OF FLOWERS, AND WITH THE PEACOCKS TRAILING BESIDE"]

"Oh!" ejaculated Hope Carolina; and, reaching the fence with a rush,
she stared down lovingly. For they were peaches, real, live, human
peaches--the kind that you buy for five cents apiece, which was a
great price in the hired house.

The form outside the fence straightened up then, and two oldish gray
eyes looked over it into hers--the Radical Judge's eyes. "No more
stones, please," they seemed to say, with a trace of embarrassment at
being caught.

Hope Carolina nodded back with a lovely courtesy, as if to say in
return: "Sholy not."

For this was no moment for politics. Besides, something in the
watching eyes--a wistful something which spoke louder than words--had
awakened all the lady in her; and there was more of it, I can tell
you, than you may be inclined to believe.

Silently, with eyes still meeting eyes, they stood there for a moment;
the great Radical almost shrinkingly, the fiery little Democrat with a
new, sweet feeling which made her seem, for the instant, the bigger,
stronger one of the two. Then, still silent, he was gone; and
snatching the peaches with another ecstatic "Oh!" Hope Carolina did
the thing she had dumbly promised. She kicked down the stone fort.