'd  spoken  to,  she  would  not  speak  again.  If  the  children
gathered  about  her,  as  they  sometimes  did,  Pearl  would
grow  positively  terrible  in  her  puny  wrath,  snatching  up
stones  to  fling  at  them,  with  shrill,  incoherent  exclama
tions,  that  made  her  mother  tremble,  because  they  had  so
much  the  sound  of  a  witch's  anathemas  in  so**ie  unknown
tongue.
The  truth  was,  that  the  little  Puritans,  being  of  the
most  intolerant  brood  that  ever  lived,  had  got  a  vague
<dea  of  something  outlandish,  unearthly,  or  at  variance
arith  ordinary  fashions,  in  the  mother  and  child ;  and
therefore  scorned  them  in  their  hearts,  and  not  unfre-
^uently  reviled  them  with  their  tongues.  Pearl  felt  the
sentiment,  and  requited  it  with  the  bitterest  hatred  that
can  be  supposed  to  rankle  in  a  childish  bosom.  These
outbreaks  of  a  fierce  temper  had  a  kind  of  value,  and
even  comfort,  for  her  mother ;  because  there  was  at  least
in  intelligible  earnestness  in  the  mood,  instead  of  the
atful  caprice  that  so  often  thwarted  her  in  the  child's
jianifestations.  It  appalled  her,  nevertheless  to  discern
nere,  again,  a  shadowy  reflection  of  the  evil  that  had
existed  in  herself.  All  this  enmity  and  passion  had
Pearl  inherited,  by  inalienable  right,  out  of  Hester's
heart.  Mother  and  daughter  stood  together  in  the  saint
Circle  of  seclusion  from  human  society ;  and  in  :Le  nature
of  toe  child  seemed  to  be  perpetuated  those  unquiet  ele
ments  thax  haJ  distracted  Hester  Pry  imp  before  Pearl's


108  THE  SCARLET  LETTER.
birth,  but  had  since  begun  to  be  soothed  away  by  th%
Foftening  influences  of  maternity.
