"I have long shrunk from children,
because they often show a distrust--a backwardness to be
familiar with me. I have even been afraid of little Pearl!"
"Ah, that was sad!" answered the mother. "But she will love
thee dearly, and thou her. She is not far off. I will call her.
Pearl! Pearl!"
"I see the child," observed the minister. "Yonder she is,
standing in a streak of sunshine, a good way off, on the other
side of the brook. So thou thinkest the child will love me?"
Hester smiled, and again called to Pearl, who was visible at
some distance, as the minister had described her, like a
bright-apparelled vision in a sunbeam, which fell down upon her
through an arch of boughs. The ray quivered to and fro, making
her figure dim or distinct--now like a real child, now like a
child's spirit--as the splendour went and came again. She heard
her mother's voice, and approached slowly through the forest.
Pearl had not found the hour pass wearisomely while her mother
sat talking with the clergyman. The great black forest--stern as
it showed itself to those who brought the guilt and troubles of
the world into its bosom--became the playmate of the lonely
infant, as well as it knew how.
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