The thought occurred to Hester, that the
child might really be seeking to approach her with childlike
confidence, and doing what she could, and as intelligently as
she knew how, to establish a meeting-point of sympathy. It
showed Pearl in an unwonted aspect. Heretofore, the mother,
while loving her child with the intensity of a sole affection,
had schooled herself to hope for little other return than the
waywardness of an April breeze, which spends its time in airy
sport, and has its gusts of inexplicable passion, and is
petulant in its best of moods, and chills oftener than caresses
you, when you take it to your bosom; in requital of which
misdemeanours it will sometimes, of its own vague purpose, kiss
your cheek with a kind of doubtful tenderness, and play gently
with your hair, and then be gone about its other idle business,
leaving a dreamy pleasure at your heart. And this, moreover, was
a mother's estimate of the child's disposition. Any other
observer might have seen few but unamiable traits, and have
given them a far darker colouring. But now the idea came
strongly into Hester's mind, that Pearl, with her remarkable
precocity and acuteness, might already have approached the age
when she could have been made a friend, and intrusted with as
much of her mother's sorrows as could be imparted, without
irreverence either to the parent or the child.
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