Chapter 19: The Child at the Brook-Side

-Hester calls Pearl who is off in the woods to come and meet Dimmesdale, yet, she is at the other side of a brook from them, and is unusually reluctant to cross it. Dimmesdale seems to think that he is the reason for this.
--“‘I have a strange fancy,’ observed the sensitive minister, ‘that this brook is the boundary between two worlds, and that thou canst never meet thy Pearl again. Or is she an elfish spirit, who, as the legends of our childhood taught us, is forbidden to cross a running stream? Pray hasten her; for this delay has already imparted a tremor to my nerves’”(187-188).
--“Pearl, without responding in any manner to these honey-sweet expressions, remained on the other side of the brook. Now she fixed her bright, wild eyes on her mother, now on the minister, and now included them both in the same glance; as if to detect and explain to herself the relation which they bore to one another”(188).
-Hester had removed the scarlet letter, which is what seems to be preventing Pearl from crossing the river.
--“At length, assuming a singular air of authority, Pearl stretched out her hand, with the small forefinger extended, and pointing evidently towards her mother's breast. And beneath, in the mirror of the brook, there was the flower-girdled and sunny image of little Pearl, pointing her small forefinger too”(188).
-Dimmesdale advises Hester to put the scarlet letter back on, for Pearl's sake.
--“‘I pray you,’ answered the minister, ‘if thou hast any means of pacifying the child, do it forthwith! Save it were the cankered wrath of an old witch, like Mistress Hibbins," added he, attempting to smile, "I know nothing that I would not sooner encounter than this passion in a child. In Pearl's young beauty, as in the wrinkled witch, it has a preternatural effect. Pacify her if thou lovest me!’”(189)
-Dimmesdale kisses Pearl, who runs off to a nearby brook to wash it off. It is evident that Pearl is not accepting enough of Dimmesdale yet.
--“Hereupon, Pearl broke away from her mother, and, running to the brook, stooped over it, and bathed her forehead, until the unwelcome kiss was quite washed off, and diffused through a long lapse of the gliding water”(191).