f perhaps two and twenty, broad, though a bit
over-heavy, in the shoulders. That approach to over-heaviness
characterized his face, otherwise clean-cut and fair. His eyes, long,
brown and ingenuous, rather went to redeem this quality of face. Under
his wide and flapping sombrero peered the front lock of his straight,
black hair. Even before he smiled, Judge Tiffany marked him as a
pleasing youth withal; and when he did smile, eyes and mouth so
softened with good humor that stern authority went from the face of
Judge Tiffany. He stood in that embarrassment which an old man feels
sometimes in the presence of a younger one, struggled for a word to
cover his slight confusion, and said:

"You are one of the college outfit camped down by the arroyo, aren't
you?"

"I am," said the youth. "I also picked the fruit too green. I am here
to take my beating."

Judge Tiffany, who held (he thought) an old-fashioned distaste for
impudence, smiled back in spite of himself.

"If you don't attend to business in small matters, how can you hope to
succeed when you go out into life?" he asked with some pomposity. He
had intended, when he opened his mouth, to say something very
different. His pomposity, he felt, grew out of his embarrassment; he
had a dim feeling that he was making himself ridiculous.

"I can't," said the youth with mock meekness; and he smiled again. At
that moment, while the Judge struggled for a reply and while the youth
was turning back to the ladder as though to mount it and be done with
the conversation, two things happened. Up from one side came Mrs.
Tiffany; and from the other, where ran a road dividing the Tiffany
orchard from the next, approached a buckboard driven by a lolling
Portuguese. Beside him sat a girl all in brown, dust-resistant khaki,
who curtained her face with a parasol. Mrs. Tiffany ran, light as an
elderly fairy, down the rows.

"Eleanor!" she called.

"Dear, dear Aunt Mattie!" cried the girl. Judge Tiffany, too, was
hurrying forward to the road. The youth had his hand on the ladder,
prepared to mount, when the parasol dropped. He stopped short with
some nervous interruption in his breathing--which might have been a
catch in his throat--at the sight of her great, grey eyes; stood
still, watching. Mrs. Tiffany was greeting the girl with the pats and
caresses of aged fondness. Out of their chatter, presently, this came
in the girl's voice:

"And I was so excited about getting back that when