underneath. Pete was feeling the oats of his new office, Uncle John
said, and Ma said back, "To think!" and looked at Uncle John as if she
were sorry for him.

Hope Carolina sat very quietly, but she was thinking hard. She knew
Pete: he was a bad, bad nigger; and though he locked arms with white
Radicals, and got a big, big salary, he could only put crosses instead
of names at the bottom of the important papers. It seemed a strange
thing that anybody who couldn't write names should get big salaries,
when Uncle John, who did heavenly writing, couldn't get any at all.
Then, along with everything else, there was Pete's maiden speech on
the court-house steps--oh, a terrible maiden speech!

"_De white man is had his day._"

Whether there was any more of it Hope Carolina did not ask herself.
That was enough, for folks looked tiptoe if you only spoke Pete's
name.

Directly, thinking over it all, Hope Carolina said earnestly to
herself, "Maybe I'd better put 'em back," meaning the two thrown
stones. It looked, yes, truly, as if she would have to kill Pete, too;
so her arsenal for destruction must not lack ammunition. It must
rather flow over than fall short.

But a liberal allowance of hot corn-bread and sorghum are not
conducive to murderous zeal. Slowly, almost painfully, the child got
down from her high-chair. She went faster down the steep house steps;
but as she neared the stone fort by the paling fence she halted, all
but paralyzed by the audacity which was being committed under her very
eyes.

Somebody was stooping down outside the fence, with a hand through the
broken place, putting something--_two round, pinky somethings!_--on
top of the stone fort, putting them exactly where the two spent shots
had been.

[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