“‘Hold thy peace, dear little Pearl,’ whispered her mother. ‘We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest.’
“‘I could not be sure that it was he, so strange he looked,’ continued the child: ‘else I would have run to him and bid him kiss me now before all the people, even as he did yonder among the dark old trees. What would the minister have said, mother? Would he have clapped his hand over his heart, and scowled on me, and bid me begone?’
“‘What should he say, Pearl,’ answered Hester, ‘save that it was no time to kiss, and that kisses are not to be given in the market-place? Well for thee, foolish child, that thou didst not speak to him.’”
“The minister withdrew his dying eyes from the old man and fixed them on the woman and the child.
“‘My little Pearl,’ said he, feebly,—and there was a sweet and gentle smile over his face, as of a spirit sinking into deep repose; nay, now that the burden was removed it seemed almost as if he would be sportive with the child,—‘dear little Pearl, wilt thou kiss me now? Thou wouldst not yonder in the forest; but now thou wilt?’
“Pearl kissed his lips. A spell was broken. The great scene of grief in which the wild infant bore a part had developed all her sympathies, and as her tears fell upon her father’s cheek they were the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor forever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it. Towards her mother, too, Pearl’s errand as a messenger of anguish was all fulfilled.
“‘Hester,’ said the clergyman, ‘farewell!’
“‘Shall we not meet again?’ whispered she, bending her face down close to his. ‘Shall we not spend our immortal life together? Surely, surely, we have ransomed one another, with all this woe! Thou lookest far into eternity with those bright, dying eyes!’”
