The Scarlet Letter

"Thou strange child! why dost thou not come to me?" exclaimed

Hester.

Pearl still pointed with her forefinger, and a frown gathered on

her brow--the more impressive from the childish, the almost

baby-like aspect of the features that conveyed it. As her mother

still kept beckoning to her, and arraying her face in a holiday

suit of unaccustomed smiles, the child stamped her foot with a

yet more imperious look and gesture. In the brook, again, was

the fantastic beauty of the image, with its reflected frown, its

pointed finger, and imperious gesture, giving emphasis to the

aspect of little Pearl.

"Hasten, Pearl, or I shall be angry with thee!" cried Hester

Prynne, who, however, inured to such behaviour on the

elf-child's part at other seasons, was naturally anxious for a

more seemly deportment now. "Leap across the brook, naughty

child, and run hither! Else I must come to thee!"

But Pearl, not a whit startled at her mother's threats any more

than mollified by her entreaties, now suddenly burst into a fit

of passion, gesticulating violently, and throwing her small

figure into the most extravagant contortions. She accompanied

this wild outbreak with piercing shrieks, which the woods

reverberated on all sides, so that, alone as she was in her

childish and unreasonable wrath, it seemed as if a hidden

multitude were lending her their sympathy and encouragement.

Seen in the brook once more was the shadowy wrath of Pearl's

image, crowned and girdled with flowers, but stamping its foot,

wildly gesticulating, and, in the midst of all, still pointing

its small forefinger at Hester's bosom.

"I see what ails the child," whispered Hester to the clergyman,

and turning pale in spite of a strong effort to conceal her

trouble and annoyance, "Children will not abide any, the

slightest, change in the accustomed aspect of things that are

daily before their eyes. Pearl misses something that she has

always seen me wear!"

"I pray you," answered the minister, "if thou hast any means of

pacifying the child, do it forthwith! Save it were the cankered

wrath of an old witch like Mistress Hibbins," added he,

attempting to smile, "I know nothing that I would not sooner

encounter than this passion in a child. In Pearl's young beauty,

as in the wrinkled witch, it has a preternatural effect. Pacify

her if thou lovest me!"

Hester turned again towards Pearl with a crimson blush upon her

cheek, a conscious glance aside clergyman, and then a heavy

sigh, while, even before she had time to speak, the blush

yielded to a deadly pallor.

"Pearl," said she sadly, "look down at thy feet! There!--before

thee!--on the hither side of the brook!"

The child turned her eyes to the point indicated, and there lay

the scarlet letter so close upon the margin of the stream that

the gold embroidery was reflected in it.