Celia is the heroine.  Lest the artist’s delineation of her charms on this very page humbug your fancy, take from me her authorized description.  She was a nice-looking, awkward, loud, rather bashful, brown-haired girl, with a sallow complexion, bright eyes, and a perpetual smile.  She had a wholesome, Spraggins-inherited love for plain food, loose clothing, and the society of the lower classes.  She had too much health and youth to feel the burden of wealth.  She had a wide mouth that kept the peppermint-pepsin tablets rattling like hail from the slot-machine wherever she went, and she could whistle hornpipes.  Keep this picture in mind; and let the artist do his worst.

Celia looked out of her window one day and gave her heart to the grocer’s young man.  The receiver thereof was at that moment engaged in conceding immortality to his horse and calling down upon him the ultimate fate of the wicked; so he did not notice the transfer.  A horse should stand still when you are lifting a crate of strictly new-laid eggs out of the wagon.

Young lady reader, you would have liked that grocer’s young man yourself.  But you wouldn’t have given him your heart, because you are saving it for a riding-master, or a shoe-manufacturer with a torpid liver, or something quiet but rich in gray tweeds at Palm Beach.  Oh, I know about it.  So I am glad the grocer’s young man was for Celia, and not for you.

The grocer’s young man was slim and straight and as confident and easy in his movements as the man in the back of the magazines who wears the new frictionless roller suspenders.  He wore a gray bicycle cap on the back of his head, and his hair was straw-colored and curly, and his sunburned face looked like one that smiled a good deal when he was not preaching the doctrine of everlasting punishment to delivery-wagon horses.  He slung imported A1 fancy groceries about as though they were only the stuff he delivered at boarding-houses; and when he picked up his whip, your mind instantly recalled Mr. Tackett and his air with the buttonless foils.

Tradesmen delivered their goods at a side gate at the rear of the house.  The grocer’s wagon came about ten in the morning.  For three days Celia watched the driver when he came, finding something new each time to admire in the lofty and almost contemptuous way he had of tossing around the choicest gifts of Pomona, Ceres, and the canning factories.  Then she consulted Annette.

To be explicit, Annette McCorkle, the second housemaid who deserves a paragraph herself.  Annette Fletcherized large numbers of romantic novels which she obtained at a free public library branch (donated by one of the biggest caliphs in the business).  She was Celia’s side-kicker and chum, though Aunt Henrietta didn’t know it, you may hazard a bean or two.

“Oh, canary-bird seed!” exclaimed Annette.  “Ain’t it a corkin’ situation?  You a heiress, and fallin’ in love with him on sight!  He’s a sweet boy, too, and above his business.  But he ain’t susceptible like the common run of grocer’s assistants.  He never pays no attention to me.”