Pearl had not found the hour pass wearisomely while her mother
sat talking with the clergyman. The great black forest--stern as
it showed itself to those who brought the guilt and troubles of
the world into its bosom--became the playmate of the lonely
infant, as well as it knew how. Sombre as it was, it put on the
kindest of its moods to welcome her. It offered her the
partridge-berries, the growth of the preceding autumn, but
ripening only in the spring, and now red as drops of blood upon
the withered leaves. These Pearl gathered, and was pleased with
their wild flavour. The small denizens of the wilderness hardly
took pains to move out of her path. A partridge, indeed, with a
brood of ten behind her, ran forward threateningly, but soon
repented of her fierceness, and clucked to her young ones not to
be afraid. A pigeon, alone on a low branch, allowed Pearl to
come beneath, and uttered a sound as much of greeting as alarm.
A squirrel, from the lofty depths of his domestic tree,
chattered either in anger or merriment--for the squirrel is such
a choleric and humorous little personage, that it is hard to
distinguish between his moods--so he chattered at the child, and
flung down a nut upon her head. It was a last year's nut, and
already gnawed by his sharp tooth. A fox, startled from his
sleep by her light footstep on the leaves, looked inquisitively
at Pearl, as doubting whether it were better to steal off, or
renew his nap on the same spot. A wolf, it is said--but here the
tale has surely lapsed into the improbable--came up and smelt of
Pearl's robe, and offered his savage head to be patted by her
hand. The truth seems to be, however, that the mother-forest,
and these wild things which it nourished, all recognised a
kindred wilderness in the human child.
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And she was gentler here than in the grassy-margined streets of
the settlement, or in her mother's cottage. The flowers appeared
to know it, and one and another whispered as she passed, "Adorn
thyself with me, thou beautiful child, adorn thyself with
me!"--and, to please them, Pearl gathered the violets, and
anemones, and columbines, and some twigs of the freshest green,
which the old trees held down before her eyes. With these she
decorated her hair and her young waist, and became a nymph
child, or an infant dryad, or whatever else was in closest
sympathy with the antique wood. In such guise had Pearl adorned
herself, when she heard her mother's voice, and came slowly
back.
Slowly--for she saw the clergyman!
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