The Signature of All Things

saucer—and her green eyes were altogether too large and demonstrative. She blinked constantly. All of this added up to make her look overly young, not very bright, and just the tiniest bit frantic.
    The girl turned her dotty little face up toward Alma and asked, “Now tell me something, did you hear bells ringing last night?”
    Alma pondered this question. In fact, she had heard bells ringing last night. There had been a fire on Fairmont Hill, and the bells had sounded alarm across the entire city.
    “I did hear them,” Alma said.
    The girl nodded with satisfaction, clapped her hands, and said, “I knew it!”
    “You knew that I heard bells last night?”
    “I knew those bells were real !”
    “I’m not sure we’ve met,” Alma said cautiously.
    “Oh, but we haven’t! My name is Retta Snow. I walked all the way here!”
    “Did you? May I ask from where?”
    One might have almost expected the girl to say, “From the pages of a fairy book!” but instead she said, “From that way,” and pointed south. Alma, in a snap, figured it all out. There was a new estate going up just two miles down the river from White Acre. The owner was a wealthy textile merchant from Maryland. This girl must be the merchant’s daughter.
    “I was hoping there would be a girl my age living around here,” said Retta. “How old are you, if I may be so plainspoken?”
    “I’m nineteen,” said Alma, though she felt much older, especially by comparison to this mite.
    “Exceptional!” Retta clapped again. “I am eighteen, which is not such a big difference at all, is it? Now you must tell me something, and I beg your honesty. What is your opinion of my dress?”
    “Well . . .” Alma knew nothing about dresses.
    “I agree!” Retta said. “It’s really not my best dress, is it? If you knew the others, you would agree even more strongly, for I have some dresses that are all the crack! But you don’t entirely detest it, either, do you?”
    “Well . . .” Alma struggled again for a response.
    Retta spared her an answer. “You are far too sweet to me! You don’t want to hurt my feelings! I already consider you my friend! Also, you have such a beautiful and reassuring chin. It makes a person want to trust you.”
    Retta slipped an arm around Alma’s waist, and leaned her head against her shoulder, nuzzling in warmly. There was no reason in the world that Alma should have welcomed this gesture. Whosoever Retta Snow may have been, it was obvious she was an absurd person, a perfect little basin of foolishness and distraction. Alma had work to do, and the girl was an interruption.
    But nobody had ever called Alma a friend.
    Nobody had ever asked Alma what she thought of a dress.
    Nobody had ever admired her chin.
    They sat on the bench for a while in this warm and surprising embrace. Then Retta pulled away, looked up at Alma, and smiled—childish, credulous, winsome.
    “What shall we do next?” she asked. “And what is your name?”
    Alma laughed, and introduced herself, and confessed that she did not quite know what to do next.
    “Are there other girls?” Retta asked.
    “There is my sister.”
    “You have a sister! You are fortunate! Let us go find her.”
    So off they went together, wandering about the grounds until they found Prudence working at her easel in one of the rose gardens.
    “You must be the sister!” Retta exclaimed, dashing over to Prudence as though she had won a prize, and Prudence was it.
    Prudence—poised and correct as ever—set down her brush, and politelyoffered over her hand for Retta to shake. After pumping Prudence’s arm with rather too much enthusiasm, Retta openly took her in for a moment, head cocked to one side. Alma tensed, waiting for Retta to comment on Prudence’s beauty, or to demand to know how it could be humanly possible that Alma and Prudence were sisters. Certainly this is what every other person asked, upon seeing Alma and Prudence together for the first time. How could one sister be so porcelain and the other so ruddy? How could one sister be so dainty and the other so strapping? Prudence tensed, as well, awaiting these same unwelcome questions. But Retta did not seem captivated or daunted by Prudence’s beauty in any manner, nor did she balk at the notion that the sisters were, in fact, sisters. She merely took her time examining Prudence from head to toe, and then clapped her hands in pleasure.
    “So now there are three of us!” she said. “What luck! If