by degrees, she bound up her daughter’s hair afresh, took off her wet shoes, if they deserved the name, spread something dry upon her shoulders, and hovered humbly about her, muttering to herself, as she recognised her old features and expression more and more.
"You are very poor, mother, I see," said Alice, looking round, when she had sat thus for some time.
"Bitter poor, my deary," replied the old woman.
She admired her daughter, and was afraid of her. Perhaps her admiration, such as it was, had originated long ago, when she first found anything that was beautiful appearing in the midst of the squalid fight of her existence. Perhaps her fear was referable, in some sort, to the retrospect she had so lately heard. Be this as it might, she stood, submissively and deferentially, before her child, and inclined her head, as if in a pitiful entreaty to be spared any further reproach.
"How have you lived?’"
"By begging, my deary.
"And pilfering, mother?"
"Sometimes, Ally—in a very small way. I am old and timid. I have taken trifles from children now and then, my deary, but not often. I have tramped about the country, pet, and I know what I know. I have watched."
"Watched?" returned the daughter, looking at her.
"I have hung about a family, my deary," said the mother, even more humbly and submissively than before.
"What family?"
"Hush, darling. Don’t be angry with me. I did it for the love of you. In memory of my poor gal beyond seas." She put out her hand deprecatingly, and drawing it back again, laid it on her lips.
"Years ago, my deary," she pursued, glancing timidly at the attentive and stem face opposed to her, "I came across his little child, by chance."
"Whose child?"
"Not his, Alice deary; don’t look at me like that; not his. How could it be his? You know he has none."
"Whose then?" returned the daughter. "You said his."
"Hush, Ally; you frighten me, deary. Mr. Dombey’s—only Mr. Dombey’s. Since then, darling, I have seen them often. I have seen him."
In uttering this last word, the old woman shrunk and recoiled, as if with sudden fear that her daughter would strike her. But though the daughter’s face was fixed upon her, and expressed the most vehement passion, she remained still: except that she clenched her arms tighter and tighter within each other, on her bosom, as if to restrain them by that means from doing an injury to herself, or someone else, in the blind fury of the wrath that suddenly possessed her.
"Little he thought who I was!" said the old woman, shaking her clenched hand.
"And little he cared!" muttered her daughter, between her teeth.
"But there we were," said the old woman, "face to face. I spoke to
