Chapter 16: A Forest Walk

-Hester sees it necessary to notify Dimmesdale of Chillingworth's character.
--“Hester Prynne remained constant in her resolve to make known to Mr. Dimmesdale, at whatever risk of present pain or ulterior consequences, the true character of the man who had crept into his intimacy”(164).
--“But, partly that she dreaded the secret or undisguised interference of old Roger Chillingworth, and partly that her conscious heart imputed suspicion where none could have been felt, and partly that both the minister and she would need the whole wide world to breathe in, while they talked together, - for all these reasons, Hester never thought of meeting him in any narrower privacy than beneath the open sky”(165).
-Hester and Pearl go to the woods to wait for Dimmesdale to go for his daily walk.
-Pearl gets suspicious of the negative connotation behind to scarlet letter.
--“‘Mother,’ said little Pearl, ‘the sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom’”(165).
-Pearl mercilessly questions Hester about the scarlet letter, and suggests that Hester signed the book of some "Black Man." Hester plays along with it.
--“‘Once in my life I met the Black Man!’ said her mother. ‘This scarlet letter is his mark!’”(168)
-Pearl analyzes a nearby brook, and suspects that the sound of it flowing is trying to tell them something.
--“Pearl resembled the brook, inasmuch as the current of her life gushed from a well-spring as mysterious, and had flowed through scenes shadowed as heavily with gloom. But, unlike the little stream, she danced and sparkled, and prattled airily along her course.”(168-169)
-Hester references her sin at this time.
--“‘If thou hadst a sorrow of thine own, the brook might tell thee of it,’ answered her mother, ‘even as it is telling me of mine!’” (169)
-Pearl suspects that Dimmesdale's act of putting his hand over his heart was because he signed the Black Man's book.
--“‘And so it is!’ said the child. ‘And, mother, he has his hand over his heart! Is it because, when the minister wrote his name in the book, the Black Man set his mark in that place? But why does he not wear it outside his bosom, as thou dost, mother?’”(169)
-Hester meets up with Dimmesdale, who seems alright to her, despite his situation.
--“To Hester's eye, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale exhibited no symptom of positive and vivacious suffering, except that, as little Pearl had remarked, he kept his hand over his heart”(170).