A sixteen would fit her except through the hips. A seamstress friend, whose girl she watches between shifts when the child gets home from school, alters her dresses and is discrete enough to cut out the labels. She knows the styles the driver likes and buys them on sale and then is reimbursed. The rest is considered an exchange. Arlis is a pure-bred genius with a Singer machine, and handwork doesn't trouble her in the least, but she is unable to curb the driver's appetite for sweets.
Any bonbon proves irresistible.
It's not as if she craves candy or schemes for it. A large refillable of diet lasts the whole day's driving, and she only nibbles at some fruit or has a small sandwich with Venetia in the afternoons, but let her see a Hershey bar or a Whitman Sampler box, and her money practically flies out of her billfold. She'll have part of it unwrapped and in her mouth before she starts the car. And once opened, it will not last the night. Just last night she watched Jimmy Stewart fly across the ocean in some rickety tent-flap plane, and as the screaming Frenchmen carried him away on their shoulders, she wiped her fingers of their last trace of chocolate.