The Sweetest Thing by Elizabeth Musser

but she was smiling and her eyes had a sparkle in them. Her teeth were chattering too.
    I went into my bathroom, quickly threw off the riding clothes Aunt Josie had lent me, and dried off with a big fluffy towel. Then I put on a thick yellow robe. Coming out, I handed another towel to Perri. “You take a bath first,” I instructed. “I’ll find you something to wear.”
    She took the towel and giggled a little.
    I began going through my drawers and closet, and then with an exasperated sigh, I said, “I don’t think any of these clothes are going to fit you. You’re not skinny like me.” I held up the bright pink day dress for her to inspect.
    â€œIt’s a lovely frock, but you’re right. It wouldn’t fit me.”
    I started down the hall to the bedrooms of Uncle Robert and Aunt Josie’s two daughters, both grown now.
    Perri followed me. “What in the world are you doing?”
    â€œWe’ve got to find you something to wear. Otherwise you’ll come down with the croup or worse.”
    â€œWell, it isn’t proper to search through the house. You don’t just look into other people’s private affairs.”
    Hands on my hips, I retorted, “If my aunt were here, I’d ask her permission. But she isn’t, and you’re freezing to death. Now go draw a bath, and I’ll find you everything you need.”
    Obediently Perri disappeared into my bathroom.
    I found a dress in my cousin Becca’s closet, which was twice the size of the bedroom I shared with my sisters in Chicago and filled with the most gorgeous dresses and evening gowns. Rummaging through Becca’s drawers, I found a clean pair of panties—I wasn’t about to lend Perri any of my moth-eaten ones—and a brassiere that just might fit her. It was certainly too big for my pitiful excuse for a chest.
    I had laid the clothing out on Becca’s bed and was searching the closet for a pair of pumps when I came across three photo albums. I opened the first one’s brittle pages and found a journal of sorts with a few photos adjoined with little gold corners. I stared at a picture of this house long ago, a horse and carriage in front and a woman—my grandmother, I recognized from the one photograph we had of her—holding on to a little boy’s hand. My father! He was dressed in a lacy white outfit that looked more appropriate for a girl than for him, and he was smiling his famous smile, which showed an array of teeth. I sank to the floor, enthralled.
    I wondered about my father. Why had he left such opulence? How could my aunt and uncle have so much and my father have so little? It didn’t make sense to me.
    I don’t know how long I’d been sitting there, wrapped in the robe and nothing else, slowly turning the yellowed pages and squinting to read the faded black-ink notations written underneath the old photos, when I heard a noise coming from down the hall. I paid no attention for a while until, the noise became louder and I recognized Perri’s voice.
    â€œDobbs! Mary Dobbs Dillard. Yoo-hoo! Where in the world are you? I’m standing here buck naked under this towel. Hurry up, for goodness’ sake.”
    I left the album, determined that I’d come back to it later, retrieved Becca’s clothes, and presented them to Perri in my room. She hurriedly pulled on the panties and bra—giggling, “Where in the world did you get these old things?”—and the dress, surveyed herself in the full-length mirror, and said, “I look like a complete disaster. Heavens! What will Mamma say, and with everything else on her mind?”
    â€œI doubt she’ll notice.”
    â€œYou don’t know Mamma. This is precisely the kind of thing she would notice.”
    I quickly bathed and then put on the blue dress I’d worn that first day and ran my fingers through my hopelessly tangled hair.
    Perri had little bobby pins