The Scarlet Letter of a Mother's Heart

The child took her mother's hand in both her own and gazed into her eyes with an earnestness that was seldom seen in her wild and capricious character. The thought occurred to hester that the child might really be seeking to approach her with childlike confidence, and doing what she could as intelligently as she knew how. Heretofore, the mother had schooled herself to hope for little other return than the waywardness of an april breeze. But now the idea came strongly into hester's mind that pearl, with her remarkable precocity and acuteness, might already have approached the age when she could be made a friend. In the little chaos of pearl's