Short Fiction O. Henry (comprehension books TXT) 📖

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.”

“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 shan’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 ferryboat of the Charon line.

“I’ll be around tomorrow 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 bylaws 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.

A day came when Thomas McLeod and Celia lingered at the end of the latticed “passage.”

“Sixteen a week isn’t much,” said Thomas, letting his cap rest on his shoulder blades.

Celia looked through the latticework and whistled a dead march. Shopping with Aunt Henrietta the day before, she had paid that much for a dozen handkerchiefs.

“Maybe I’ll get a raise next month,” said Thomas. “I’ll be around tomorrow at the same time with a bag of flour and the laundry soap.”

“All right,” said Celia. “Annette’s married cousin pays only $20 a month for a flat in the Bronx.”

Never for a moment did she count on the Spraggins money. She knew Aunt Henrietta’s invincible pride of caste and pa’s mightiness as a Colossus of cash, and she understood that if she chose Thomas she and her grocer’s young man might go whistle for a living.

Another day came, Thomas violating the dignity of Nabob Avenue with “The Devil’s Dream,” whistled keenly between his teeth.

“Raised to eighteen a week yesterday,” he said. “Been pricing flats around Morningside. You want to start untying those apron strings and unpinning that cap, old girl.”

“Oh, Tommy!” said Celia, with her broadest smile. “Won’t that be enough? I got Betty to show me how to make a cottage pudding. I guess we could call it a flat pudding if we wanted to.”

“And tell no lie,” said Thomas.

“And I can sweep and polish and dust⁠—of course, a parlor maid learns that. And we could whistle duets of evenings.”

“The old man said he’d raise me to twenty at Christmas if Bryan couldn’t think of any harder name to call a Republican than a ‘postponer,’ ” said the grocer’s young man.

“I can sew,” said Celia; “and I know that you must make the gas company’s man show his badge when he comes to look at the meter; and I know how to put up quince jam and window curtains.”

“Bully! you’re all right, Cele. Yes, I believe we can pull it off on eighteen.”

As he was jumping into the wagon the second parlor maid braved discovery by running swiftly to the gate.

“And, oh, Tommy, I forgot,” she called, softly. “I believe I could make your neckties.”

“Forget it,” said Thomas decisively.

“And another thing,” she continued. “Sliced cucumbers at night will drive away cockroaches.”

“And sleep, too, you bet,” said Mr. McLeod. “Yes, I believe if I have a delivery to make on the West Side this afternoon I’ll look in at a furniture store I know over there.”

It was just as the wagon dashed away that old Jacob Spraggins struck the sideboard with his fist and made the mysterious remark about ten thousand dollars that you perhaps remember. Which justifies the reflection that some stories, as well as life, and puppies thrown into wells, move around in circles. Painfully but briefly we must shed light on Jacob’s words.

The foundation of his fortune was made when he was twenty. A poor coal-digger (ever hear of a rich one?) had saved a dollar or two