been perpetually flavored? The wine of
life, henceforth to be presented to her lips, must be indeed rich,
delicious, and exhilarating, in its chased and golden beaker; or else
leave an inevitable and weary languor, after the lees of bitterness
wherewith she had been drugged, as with a cordial of intensest
potency.

Pearl was decked out with airy gayety. It would have been impossible
to guess that this bright and sunny apparition owed its existence to
the shape of gloomy gray; or that a fancy, at once so gorgeous and so
delicate as must have been requisite to contrive the child's apparel,
was the same that had achieved a task perhaps more difficult, in
imparting so distinct a peculiarity to Hester's simple robe. The
dress, so proper was it to little Pearl, seemed an effluence, or
inevitable development and outward manifestation of her character, no
more to be separated from her than the many-hued brilliancy from a
butterfly's wing, or the painted glory from the leaf of a bright
flower. As with these, so with the child; her garb was all of one idea
with her nature. On this eventful day, moreover, there was a certain
singular inquietude and excitement in her mood, resembling nothing so
much as the shimmer of a diamond, that sparkles and flashes with the
varied throbbings of the breast on which it is displayed. Children
have always a sympathy in the agitations of those connected with them;
always, especially, a sense of any trouble or impending revolution, of
whatever kind, in domestic circumstances; and therefore Pearl, who was
the gem on her mother's unquiet bosom, betrayed, by the very dance of
her spirits, the emotions which none could detect in the marble
passiveness of Hester's brow.

This effervescence made her flit with a bird-like movement, rather
than walk by her mother's side. She broke continually into shouts of a
wild, inarticulate, and sometimes piercing music. When they reached
the market-place, she became still more restless, on perceiving the
stir and bustle that enlivened the spot; for it was usually more like
the broad and lonesome green before a village meeting-house, than the
centre of a town's business.

"Why, what is this, mother?" cried she. "Wherefore have all the people
left their work to-day? Is it a play-day for the whole world? See,
there is the blacksmith! He has washed his sooty face, and put on his
Sabbath-day clothes, and looks as if he would gladly be merry, if any
kind body would only