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 m