Explore "The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Hester told little Pearl to run down and play by the shore while she talked with the man gathering the herbs. The child flew away like a bird. She kicked off her shoes and went pattering along the water’s edge in her bare white feet. Now and then she stopped and peered into a pool left by the receding water, which formed a mirror for Pearl to see her face in. Staring back at her from the water was a little girl with dark, shiny curls and an elflike smile in her eyes. Pearl, having no other playmate, invited the girl to take her hand and run a race with her. But the image of the girl also beckoned, as if to say, “This is a better place! Come into the pool with me!” Pearl stepped into the pool up to her knees and saw her own white feet at the bottom. Deeper down, she could see the gleam of a sort of broken smile, floating here and there in the stirred-up water.
Meanwhile, her mother had approached the doctor.