Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the thirty-fourth chapter of Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

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Take your chapter by chapter one fight so many adventures and mountains we can climb Take your word for wordline but line we're part at our time.

Welcome.

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Today we'll be continuing anne of the island by Lucy Maud Montgomery chapter 34 John Douglas Speaks at Last anne was not without a feeble hope that something might come of it after all, but nothing did.

John Douglas came and took Janet driving and walked home from prayer, meeting with her as he had been doing for 20 years, and as he seemed likely to do for 20 years more.

The summer waned, Anne taught her school and wrote letters and studied a little.

Her walks to and from school were pleasant.

She always went by way of the swamp.

It was a lovely place, a boggy soil green with the greenest of mossy hillocks.

A silvery brook meandered through it, and spruces stood erectly, their boughs a trail with gray green mosses, their roots overgrown with all sorts of woodland lovelinesses.

Nevertheless, Anne found life and Valley Road a little monotonous.

To be sure, there was one diverting incident she had not seen the length toeheaded Samuel of the Peppermint since the evening of his call, save for chance meetings on the road.

But one warm August night, he appeared and solemnly seated himself on the rustic bench by the porch.

He wore his usual working habiliments, consisting of veripatched trousers, a blue jean shirt out at the elbows, and a ragged straw hat.

He was chewing a straw, and he kept on chewing it while he looked solemnly at Anne Ann.

Anne, later booked aside with a sigh and took up her doily conversation with Sam was really out of the question.

After a long silence, Sam suddenly spoke.

I'm leaving over there, he said abruptly.

Waving his straw in the direction of the neighboring house.

Oh, are you?

Said Anne politely.

Yes.

And where are you going now?

Well, I've been thinking of getting a place of my own.

There's one that had suit me over at Millersville, but if I rent it.

I'll want a woman.

I suppose so, said Anne vaguely.

Yep.

There was another long silence.

Finally Sam removed his straw again and.

Said, will you have me?

What?

Gasped Anne.

Will you have me?

Do you mean marry you?

Queried.

Poor Anne.

Feebly yes.

Why, I'm hardly acquainted with you.

Cried anne indignantly.

But you'd get acquainted with me after we was married, said Sam.

Anne gathered up her poor dignity.

Certainly I won't marry you, she said.

Haughtily.

Well, you might do worse, expatulated Sam.

I'm a good worker and I've got some money in the bank.

Don't think of this to me again.

Whatever puts such an idea into your head?

Said Anne, her sense of humor getting the better of her wrath.

It was such an absurd question.

You're a likely looking girl and I have a right smart way of stepping, said Sam.

I don't want no lazy woman.

Think it over.

I won't change my mind yet awhile wall I must be getting got.

Her mix the cows and delusions concerning proposals had suffered so much of late years that there were few of them left, so she could laugh wholeheartedly over this one.

Not feeling any secret sting.

She mimicked poor Sam to Janet that night, and both of them laughed immoderately over his plunge in the sentiment.

One afternoon, when Anne, sojourn in Valley Road, was drawing to a close, alec Ward came driving down to Wayside in hot haste for Janet.

They want you at the Douglas place quick, he said.

I really believe old Mrs.

Douglas is.

Going to die at last.

After pretending to do it for 20 years, Janet ran to get her hat.

Anne asked if Mrs.

Douglas was worse than usual.

She is not half as bad, said Alex solemnly, and that's what makes me think it's serious.

Other times she'd be screaming and throwing herself all over the place.

This time she's lying still and mum.

When Mrs.

Douglas is mum, she is pretty sick.

You bet you don't like old Mrs.

Douglas, said Anne curiously.

I like cats as is cats.

I don't like cats as is women, was Alex cryptic reply.

Janet came home in the twilight.

Miss Douglas is dead, she said wearily.

She died soon after I got there.

She just spoke to me once.

I suppose you'll marry John now, she said.

It cut me to the heart, Anne.

To think John's own mother thought I wouldn't marry him because of her.

I couldn't say a word either.

There were other women there.

I was thankful John had gone out.

Janet began to cry drearily, but Anne brewed her a hot drink of ginger tea to her.

Comforting, to be sure.

Anne discovered later on that she had used white pepper instead of ginger, but Janet never knew the difference.

The evening after the funeral, Janet and Anne were sitting on the front porch steps at sunset.

The wind had fallen asleep in the pinelands and lured sheets of heat.

Lightning flickered across the northern skies.

Janet wore her ugly black dress and looked her very worst.

Her eyes and nose read from crying.

They talked little, for Janet seemed faintly to resent Anne's efforts to cheer her up.

She plainly preferred to be miserable.

Suddenly the gate latch clicked, and John Douglas strode into the garden.

He walked towards them, straight over the geranium bed.

Janet stood up.

So did Anne.

Anne was a tall girl and wore a white dress, but John Douglas did not see her.

Janet, he said, will you marry me?

The words burst out as if they had been wanting to be said for 20 years and must be uttered now before anything else.

Janet's face was so red from crying that it couldn't turn any redder, so it turned the most unbecoming purple.

Why didn't you ask me before?

She said slowly.

I couldn't.

She made me promise not to.

Mother made me promise not to 19 years ago.

She took a terrible spell.

We thought she couldn't live through it.

She implored me to promise not to ask you to marry me while she was alive.

I didn't want to promise such a thing, even though we all thought she couldn't live very long.

The doctor only gave her six months, but she begged it on her knees, sick and suffering.

I had to promise.

What had your mother against me?

Cried Janet.

Nothing.

Nothing.

She just didn't want another woman, any woman there while she was living.

She said if I didn't promise, she'd died right there, and I'd have killed her.

So I promised, and she's held me to that promise ever since.

Though I've gone on my knees to her in my turn to beg her to let me off.

Why didn't you tell me this?

Asked Janet, chokingly.

If I'd only known.

Why didn't you just tell me?

She made me promise I wouldn't tell.

A soul, said John hoarsely.

She swore me to it on the bible.

Janet.

I'd never have done it if I dreamed it was to be for so long.

Janet, you'll never know what I've suffered these 19 years.

I know I've made you suffer, too.

But you'll marry me for all, won't you, Janet?

Oh, Janet, won't you?

I've come as soon as I could to ask you.

At this moment, the stupefied Anne came to her senses and realized that she had no business to be there.

She slipped away and did not see Janet until the next morning, when the latter told her the rest of the story.

That cruel, relentless, deceitful old woman.

Cried Anne.

Hush.

She's dead, said Janet solemnly.

If she wasn't but she is, so we mustn't speak evil of her.

But I'm happy at last, anne and I wouldn't have minded waiting so long a bit if I'd only known why.

When are you to be married?

Next month.

Of course, it will be very quiet, I suppose.

People will talk terrible.

They'll say I made enough haste to snap John up as soon as his poor old mother was out of the way.

John wanted to let them know the truth, but I said, no, Jon.

After all, she was your mother and will keep the secret between us and not cast any shadow on her memory.

I don't mind what people say.

Now that I know the truth myself, it don't matter.

I might let it all be buried with the dead, says I to him, so I coaxed him round to agree with me.

You're much more forgiving than I could ever be, and said rather crossly.

You'll feel differently about a good many things when you get to be my.

Age, said Janet tolerantly.

That's one of the things we learn as we grow older how to forgive.

It comes easier at 40 than it did at 20.

Thank you for joining Byte at the 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 Anne of the island.

By line one.