"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.