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.

After she was in bed, she explained the deed to herself; for there,
with reflection, had come some of the pangs that must pierce the
breast of the traitor in any decent camp. You can't take peaches and
throw stones too, no, not even if Democrats would almost want to hang
you for not doing it!

She had come to the pits by now, and these, after more rapturous
suckings, she put under her pillow for planting; for when you are six
you plant everything. She did not know that another and more wonderful
seed had already put forth a green shoot in her own so piteously
hardened little heart.

Hope Carolina slept in a marvelous bed, almost the only thing of
value, in fact, left in the hired house. Ma would not use it herself,
she told dear friends, because of its memories; but as the child of
the house had no recollections of other times, it seemed to her always
a downy and restful nest. There were carved pineapples at the top of
the high mahogany posts, and four more at the bottom of them; and when
Hope Carolina lay in it in the morning, she could see everything that
was going on in the Radical Judge's garden--that lovely paradise of
peacocks and poplars and magnolias which had once been the dear
Prestons'.

Sometimes, even before the truce of peaches, she had felt a little
regret that the decencies barred out all acquaintance with Radical
families. For always on the hot mornings--long, long before it was
time for her to get up--there were the Radical Judge and the little
crippled Grace going about among the shrubs and flowers as if they
were the nicest people. And always the little pale, laughing child
presented a very pretty picture in the wheeled chair, which her father
pushed so patiently; foreve