Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the first chapter of Rainbow Valley.
Come with us as we release one bite a day of one of your favorite classic novels, plays & short stories. Bree reads these classics like she reads to her daughter, one chapter a day. If you love books or audiobooks and want something to listen to as you're getting ready, driving to work, or as you're getting ready for bed, check out Bite at a Time Books!
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Wherever you listen to podcasts today, we'll.
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Be starting Rainbow Valley by Lucy Maud Montgomery.
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Chapter One Home Again it was a clear apple green evening in May, and four winds harbor was mirroring back the clouds of the golden west.
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Between its softly dark shores.
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The seam moaned eerily on the sandbar, sorrowful even in spring, but a sly, jovial wind came piping down the red harbor road along which Miss Cornelia's comfortable matronly figure was making its way towards the village of Glenn St.
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Mary.
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Miss Cornelia was rightfully Mrs.
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Marshall Elliott and had been Mrs.
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Marshall Elliot for 13 years, but even yet, more people referred to her as Miss Cornelia than as Mrs.
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Elliott.
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The old name was dear to her old friends.
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Only one of them contemptuously dropped it.
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Susan Baker, the gray and grim and faithful handmaiden of the Blythe family at Ingleside, never lost an opportunity of calling her Mrs.
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Marshall Elliot with the most killing and pointed emphasis, as if to say, you wanted to be Mrs.
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And Mrs.
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You shall be with a vengeance as far as I am concerned.
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Miss Cornelia was going up to Ingleside to see Doctor and Mrs.
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Blythe, who were just home from Europe.
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They had been away for three months, having left in February to attend a famous medical congress in London, and certain things which Miss Cornelia was anxious to discuss had taken place in the glen during their absence.
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For one thing, there was a new family in the mans, and such a.
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Family Miss Cornelia shook her head over.
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Them several times as she walked briskly along.
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Susan Baker and the Aunt Shirley of other days saw her coming as they sat on the big veranda at Ingleside, enjoying the charm of the cat's light, a sweetness of sleepy robins whistling among the twilight maples, and the dance of a gusty group of daffodils blowing against the old mellow red brick wall of the lawn.
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Anne was sitting on the steps, her hands clasped over her knee, looking in the kind dusk as girlish as a mother of many has any right to be.
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And the beautiful grey green eyes gazing down the harbor road were as full of unquenchable sparkle and dream as ever.
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Behind her in the hammock, Rila Blithe was curled up a fat, rolly, poly little creature of six years, the youngest of the Ingleside children.
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She had curly red hair and hazel eyes that were now buttoned up after the funny wrinkled fashion in which Rilla always went to sleep.
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Surely the little brown boy as he was known in the family, who's who was asleep in Susan's arms he was brown haired, brown eyed and brown skinned with very rosy cheeks, and he was Susan's especial love.
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After his birth, Anne had been very ill for a long time and Susan mothered the baby with a passionate tenderness which none of the other children dearest they were to her had ever called out.
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Dr.
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Blithe had said that but for her he would never have lived.
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I gave him life just as much as you did, Mrs.
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Dr.
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Dear.
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Susan was wont to say.
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He is just as much my baby as he is yours.
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And indeed it was always to Susan that surely ran to be kissed for bumps and rocked to sleep and protected from well deserved spankings.
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Susan had conscientiously spanked all the other Blithe's children when she thought they needed it for their soul's good.
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But she would not spank Shirley, nor allow his mother to do so once Dr.
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Blithe had spanked him and Susan had been Stormly indignant.
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That man would spank an angel, Mrs.
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Dr.
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Dear, that he would, she had.
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Declared bitterly, and she would not make the poor doctor a pie for weeks.
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She had taken Shirley with her to her brother's home during his parent's absence, while all the other children had gone to Avon Lee, and she had three blessed months of him all to herself.
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Nevertheless, Susan was very glad to find herself back at Ingleside with all her darlings around her again.
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Ingleside was her world, and in it she reigned supreme.
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Even Anne seldom questioned her decisions, much to the disgust of Mrs.
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Rachel Lind of Green Gables, who gloomily told Anne whenever she visited Four Winds that she was letting Susan get to be entirely too much of a boss and would live to ru it.
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Here is Cornelia Bryant coming up the harbour road, missus Dr.
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Deere said susan.
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She will be coming to unload three months gossip on us.
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I hope so, said Anne, hugging her knees.
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I'm starving for Glenn St.
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Mary.
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Gossip, Susan.
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I hope Ms.
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Cornelia can tell me everything that has happened while we've been away.
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Everything.
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Who has got born or married or drunk, who has died or gone away.
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Or come or fought or lost a.
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Cow or found a bow.
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It's so delightful to be home again with all the dear Glenn folks, and I want to know all about them.
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I remember wondering as I walked through westminster abbey which of her two especial bows Milicent drew would finally marry.
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Do you know, Susan, I have a dreadful suspicion that I love gossip.
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Well, of course, missus dr.
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Dear.
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Admitted, susan, every proper woman likes to hear the news.
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I'm rather interested in Milicent drew's case myself.
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I never had a bow, much less two.
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And I do not mind now.
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Her being an old maid does not hurt when you get used to it.
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Milicen's hair always looked to me as if she had swept it up with a broom.
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But the men do not seem to mind that I see only her pretty.
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Peacant, mocking little face.
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Susan, that may very well be, mrs.
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Dr.
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Dear.
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The good book says that favor is deceitful and beauty is vain.
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But I should not have minded finding that out for myself if it had been so ordained.
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I have no doubt we will all be beautiful when we are angels, but what good will it do us then?
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Speaking of gossip, however, they do say that poor Mrs.
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Harrison miller over harbor tried to hang herself last week.
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Oh, Susan, calm yourself.
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Mrs.
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Dr.
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Dear.
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She did not succeed.
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But I really do not blame her for trying, for her husband is a terrible man.
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But she was very foolish to think of hanging herself and leaving the way clear for him to marry some other woman.
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If I had been in her shoes, mrs.
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Dr.
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Deer, I would have gone to work to worry about him so that he would try to hang himself instead of me.
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Not that I hold with people hanging themselves under any circumstances.
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Mrs.
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Dr.
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Deer.
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What is the matter with harrison miller, anyway?
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Said Anne impatiently.
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He's always driving someone to extremes.
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Well, some people call it religion, and some call it cussedness.
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Begging your pardon, mrs.
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Dr.
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Dear, for using such a word.
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It seems they cannot make out which it is in Harrison's case.
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There are days when he growls at everybody because he thinks he's for ordained to eternal punishment, and then there are days when he says he does not care and goes and gets drunk.
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My own opinion is that he's not sound in his intellect, for none of that branch of the millers were.
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His grandfather went out of his mind.
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He thought he was surrounded by big black spiders.
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They crawled over him and floated in the air about him.
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I hope I shall never go insane, mrs.
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Dr.
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Dear, and I do not think I will because it is not a habit of the bakers.
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But if in all wise providence should decree it, I hope it will not take the form of big black spiders, for I loathe the animals.
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As for Mrs.
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Miller, I do not know whether she really deserves.
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Pity or not, there are some who say she just married Harrison despite Richard Taylor, which seems to me a very peculiar reason for getting married.
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But then, of course, I am no judge of things.
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Matrimonial.
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Mrs.
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Dr, dear.
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And there's Cornelia Bryant at the gate.
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So I'll put this blessed brown baby on his bed and get my knitting.
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Thank you for joining Bite at a.
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Time Books today while we read a bite of one of your favorite classics.
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Again, my name is Brie Carlyle and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of Rainbow Valley.
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Don't forget to sign up for our newsletter@biteattatimebooks.com and check out the shop.
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You can check out the show notes or our website, Bite atetimebooks.com for the rest of the links for our show.
