“He will to me,” said Celia.

“Riches—­” began Annette, unsheathing the not unjustifiable feminine sting.

“Oh, you’re not so beautiful,” said Celia, with her wide, disarming smile.  “Neither am I; but he sha’n’t know that there’s any money mixed up with my looks, such as they are.  That’s fair.  Now, I want you to lend me one of your caps and an apron, Annette.”

“Oh, marshmallows!” cried Annette.  “I see.  Ain’t it lovely?  It’s just like ‘Lurline, the Left-Handed; or, A Buttonhole Maker’s Wrongs.’  I’ll bet he’ll turn out to be a count.”

There was a long hallway (or “passageway,” as they call it in the land of the Colonels) with one side latticed, running along the rear of the house.  The grocer’s young man went through this to deliver his goods.  One morning he passed a girl in there with shining eyes, sallow complexion, and wide, smiling mouth, wearing a maid’s cap and apron.  But as he was cumbered with a basket of Early Drumhead lettuce and Trophy tomatoes and three bunches of asparagus and six bottles of the most expensive Queen olives, he saw no more than that she was one of the maids.

But on his way out he came up behind her, and she was whistling “Fisher’s Hornpipe” so loudly and clearly that all the piccolos in the world should have disjointed themselves and crept into their cases for shame.

The grocer’s young man stopped and pushed back his cap until it hung on his collar button behind.

“That’s out o’ sight, Kid,” said he.

“My name is Celia, if you please,” said the whistler, dazzling him with a three-inch smile.

That’s all right.  I’m Thomas McLeod.  What part of the house do you work in?”

“I’m the—­the second parlor maid.”

“Do you know the ’Falling Waters’?”

“No,” said Celia, “we don’t know anybody.  We got rich too quick—­that is, Mr. Spraggins did.”

“I’ll make you acquainted,” said Thomas McLeod.  “It’s a strathspey—­the first cousin to a hornpipe.”

If Celia’s whistling put the piccolos out of commission, Thomas McLeod’s surely made the biggest flutes hunt their holes.  He could actually whistle bass.

When he stopped Celia was ready to jump into his delivery wagon and ride with him clear to the end of the pier and on to the ferry-boat of the Charon line.

“I’ll be around to-morrow at 10:15,” said Thomas, “with some spinach and a case of carbonic.”

“I’ll practice that what-you-may-call-it,” said Celia.  “I can whistle a fine second.”

The processes of courtship are personal, and do not belong to general literature.  They should be chronicled in detail only in advertisements of iron tonics and in the secret by-laws of the Woman’s Auxiliary of the Ancient Order of the Rat Trap.  But genteel writing may contain a description of certain stages of its progress without intruding upon the province of the X-ray or of park policemen.