The Signature of All Things

we were boys, do you realize what we would have to do now? We would have to fall into a terrific scrape with one another, wrestling and fighting and bloodying each other’s noses. Then, at the end of our battle, after suffering ghastly injuries, we would come up as fast friends. It’s true! I’ve seen it done! Now, on one hand that seems like a great lot of fun, but I would be sorry to spoil my new dress—although it is not my best dress, as Alma has pointed out—and so I thank heaven today that we are not boys. And since we are not boys, this means we can be fast friends right away, without any fighting at all. Don’t you agree?”
    Nobody had time to agree, as Retta barreled on: “Then it is decided! We are the Three Fast Friends. Somebody should write a song about us. Can either one of you write songs?”
    Prudence and Alma looked at each other, dumbstruck.
    “Then I’ll do it, if I must!” Retta plowed forth. “Give me a moment.”
    Retta closed her eyes, moved her lips, and tapped her fingers against her waist, as though counting out syllables.
    Prudence gave Alma a questioning glance, and Alma shrugged.
    After a silence so long it would have felt awkward to anyone in the world except Retta Snow, Retta opened her eyes again.
    “I think I’ve got it,” she announced. “Somebody else will have to write the music, for I’m dreadful with music, but I’ve written the first verse. I think it captures our friendship perfectly. What do you think?” She cleared her throat and recited:
“We are fiddle, fork, and spoon,
We are dancing with the moon,
If you’d like to steal a kiss from us,
You’d better steal one soon!”
    Before Alma had a chance to try to decipher this singular little rhyme (to try to work out who was fiddle, who was fork, and who was spoon), Prudence burst into laughter. This was remarkable, for Prudence never laughed. Her laugh was magnificent, brash, and loud—not at all what one would expect from such a doll-like individual.
    “Who are you?” Prudence asked, when she finally stopped laughing.
    “I am Retta Snow, madam, and I am your newest and most undeviating friend.”
    “Well, Retta Snow,” said Prudence, “I believe you might be undeviatingly mad.”
    “So says everyone!” replied Retta, bowing with a flourish. “But nonetheless—I am here!”
----
    I ndeed, she was.
    Retta Snow soon became a fixture around the White Acre estate. As a child, Alma had once owned a little cat who’d wandered onto the property and conquered the place in much the same manner. That cat—a pretty little item, with bright yellow stripes—had simply strolled into the White Acre kitchen one sunny day, rubbed herself against everyone’s legs, and then settled down beside the hearth with her tail curled around her body, purring lightly, eyes half-closed in contentment. The cat was so comfortable and confident that no one had the heart to inform the creature that it didn’t belong—and thus, soon enough, it did .
    Retta’s gambit was similar. She showed up at White Acre that day, put herself at ease, and suddenly it seemed she had always been there. Nobody ever invited Retta, exactly, but Retta did not seem to be the sort of young lady who required invitations for anything. She arrived when she wanted to arrive, stayed for as long as she pleased, helped herself to anything she desired, and departed when she was ready.
    Retta Snow lived the most shockingly—even enviably—ungoverned life.Her mother was a society fixture whose mornings were occupied by long hours spent arranging her toilet, whose afternoons were consumed by visits to other society fixtures, and whose evenings were kept terribly busy with dances. Her father, a man both indulgent and absent, eventually purchased for his daughter a reliable carriage horse and a two-wheeled chaise, in which the girl bounced around Philadelphia quite at her own discretion. She spent her days speeding through the world on her chaise like a happy, roistering bee. If she wished to attend the theater, she attended the theater. If she wished to watch a parade, she found a parade. And if she wished to spend the entire day at White Acre, she did so at her own leisure.
    Over the next year, Alma would find Retta in the most surprising places at White Acre: standing atop a vat in the buttery, making the dairymaids laugh as she acted out a scene from The School for Scandal ; or dangling her feet off the barge dock into the oily waters of the Schuylkill