"The Scarlet Letter"
by Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Previous Page   Next Page   Speaker Off
 

     Hester bade little Pearl run down to the margin of the water, and play with the shells and tangled sea-weed, until she should have talked awhile with yonder gatherer of herbs. So the child flew away like a bird, and, making bare her small white feet went pattering along the moist margin of the sea. Here and there she came to a full stop, and peeped curiously into a pool, left by the retiring tide as a mirror for Pearl to see her face in. Forth peeped at her, out of the pool, with dark, glistening curls around her head, and an elf-smile in her eyes, the image of a little maid whom Pearl, having no other playmate, invited to take her hand and run a race with her. But the visionary little maid on her part, beckoned likewise, as if to say--"This is a better place; come thou into the pool." And Pearl, stepping in mid-leg deep, beheld her own white feet at the bottom; while, out of a still lower depth, came the gleam of a kind of fragmentary smile, floating to and fro in the agitated water.

 

     Meanwhile her mother had accosted the physician. "I would speak a word with you," said she--"a word that concerns us much."

 
Text provided by Project Gutenberg.
Audio by Verkaro.com and performed by Mary Woods.
Audio copyright 2008, LoudLit.org
Audio production made possible through the generous support of
Gordon W. Draper, Lois and Will Yeats, Theresa Mahoney and Todd Fadoir.
Flash mp3 player by Jeroen Wijering. (cc) some rights reserved.
Web page presentation by LoudLit.org.