Hester and Pearl
- As Chillingworth returns to his task of gathering herbs, Hester watches him.
- Is she imagining the shadow following him? Can such an evil man actually heal anyone? Or will the herbs become poison, because his hatred ruins everything around him?
- Hester declares that she hates him, even if hatred is a sin.
- She can't believe she ever agreed to marry Chillingworth, and she actually gets kind of mad at him for convincing her that she'd be happy with him.
- In fact, she decides that he's done more wrong to her than she's done to him.
- All this time, Pearl has been entertaining herself by dressing up as a mermaid with a seaweed scarf, mantle, and headdress—and a seaweed "A" on her chest.
- Hester asks Pearl if she even knows that Hester's letter means.
- Yep—and the minister keeps his hand over his heart for the same reason.
- How does she know this? Pearl says that she's said everything she knows—but Chillingworth knows a lot more.
- Smart girl.
- Pearl takes her mother's hands, and Hester realizes that Pearl is growing up into kind of a nice girl. Maybe they can be friends now.
- As they stand there, Pearl asks her mother what the letter means and why Dimmesdale keeps his hand over his heart.
- But Hester can't tell her, even if it would make Pearl sympathetic. Instead, she does the knee-jerk adult thing of saying that there are some things kids should ask.
- As to why she wears the scarlet letter, she says, "I wear it for the sake of its gold thread" (15.26).
- That's the first time she's lied about it, and she can feel the evil creeping in.
- Like any kid told not to ask questions, Pearl… continues to ask questions, until Hester finally snaps at her.