level with the coverlet, and stretching out her hand, so as to touch her daughter’s arm, began:
"My handsome gal—"
Heaven, what a cry was that, with which she stopped there, gazing at the poor form lying on the bed!
"Changed, long ago, mother! Withered, long ago," said Alice, without looking at her. "Don’t grieve for that now.'
—"My daughter," faltered the old woman, "my gal who ’ll soon get better, and shame 'em all with her good looks."
Alice smiled mournfully at Harriet, and fondled her hand a little closer, but said nothing.
"Who ’ll soon get better, I say," repeated the old woman, menacing the vacant air with her shrivelled fist, "and who ’ll shame 'em all with her good looks—she will. I say she will! she shall!"—as if she were in passionate contention with some unseen opponent at the bedside, who contradicted her—"my daughter has been turned away from, and cast out, but she could boast relationship to proud folks too, if she chose. Ah! To proud folks! There’s relationship without your clergy and your wedding rings—they may make it, but they can’t break it—and my daughter’s well related. Show me Mrs. Dombey, and I ’ll show you my Alice’s first cousin."
Harriet glanced from the old woman to the lustrous eyes intent upon her face, and derived corroboration from them.
"What!" cried the old woman, her nodding head bridling with a ghastly vanity. "Though I am old and ugly now,—much older by life and habit than years though,—I was once as young as any. Ah! as pretty too, as many! I was a fresh country wench in my time, darling," stretching out her arm to Harriet, across the bed, "and looked it, too. Down in my country, Mrs. Dombey’s father and his brother were the gayest gentlemen and the best-liked that came a visiting from London—they have long been dead, though! Lord, Lord, this long while! The brother, who was my Ally’s father, longest of the two."
She raised her head a little, and peered at her daughter’s face; as if from the remembrance of her own youth, she had flown to the remembrance of her child’s. Then, suddenly, she laid her face down on the bed, and shut her head up in her hands and arms.
"They were as like," said the old woman, without looking up, "as you could see two brothers, so near an age—there wasn’t much more than a year between them, as I recollect—and if you could have seen my gal, as I have seen her once, side by side with the other’s daughter, you’d have seen, for all the difference of dress and life, that they were like each other. Oh! is the likeness gone, and is it my gal—only my gal—that’s to change so!"
"We shall all change, mother, in our turn," said Alice.
"Turn!" cried the old woman, "but why not hers as soon as my gal’s! The mother must have changed—she looked as old as me, and full as wrinkled through her paint—but she was handsome. What have I done, I, what have I done worse than her, that only my gal is to lie there fading!"
With another of those wild cries, she went running out into the room
