early sought to impose a tender, but
strict control over the infant immortality that was committed to her
charge. But the task was beyond her skill. After testing both smiles
and frowns, and proving that neither mode of treatment possessed any
calculable influence, Hester was ultimately compelled to stand aside,
and permit the child to be swayed by her own impulses. Physical
compulsion or restraint was effectual, of course, while it lasted. As
to any other kind of discipline, whether addressed to her mind or
heart, little Pearl might or might not be within its reach, in
accordance with the caprice that ruled the moment. Her mother, while
Pearl was yet an infant, grew acquainted with a certain peculiar look,
that warned her when it would be labor thrown away to insist,
persuade, or plead. It was a look so intelligent, yet inexplicable,
so perverse, sometimes so malicious, but generally accompanied by a
wild flow of spirits, that Hester could not help questioning, at such
moments, whether Pearl were a human child. She seemed rather an airy
sprite, which, after playing its fantastic sports for a little while
upon the cottage floor, would flit away with a mocking smile. Whenever
that look appeared in her wild, bright, deeply black eyes, it invested
her with a strange remoteness and intangibility; it was as if she were
hovering in the air and might vanish, like a glimmering light, that
comes we know not whence, and goes we know not whither. Beholding it,
Hester was constrained to rush towards the child,--to pursue the
little elf in the flight which she invariably began,--to snatch her to
her bosom, with a close pressure and earnest kisses,--not so much from
overflowing love, as to assure herself that Pearl was flesh and blood,
and not utterly delusive. But Pearl's laugh, when she was caught,
though full of merriment and music, made her mother more doubtful than
before.

Heart-smitten at this bewildering and baffling spell, that so often
came between herself and her sole treasure, whom she had bought so
dear, and who was all her world, Hester sometimes burst into
passionate tears. Then, perhaps,--for there was no foreseeing how it
might affect her,--Pearl would frown, and clench her little fist, and
harden her small features into a stern, unsympathizing look of
discontent. Not seldom, she would laugh anew, and louder than before,
like a thing incapable and unintelligent of human sorrow. Or--but this
more rarely happened--she