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Anne of Green Gables - A New Interest In Life
Episode 175th July 2022 • Bite at a Time Books • Bree Carlile
00:00:00 00:15:31

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Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the seventeenth chapter of Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

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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Transcripts

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Take a look in the book and let's see what we can find.

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Take your chapter by chapter, one by at a time.

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So many adventures and mountains we can climb.

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Take your word for word line but line one part at a time.

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Welcome to Bite at a Time Books, where we read you your favorite classics one byte at a time.

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My name is Brie Carlyle, and I.

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Love to read and wanted to share.

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My passion with listeners like you.

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If you enjoy our show, be sure to follow us so you get all the new episodes.

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If you want to see exclusive behind the scenes of our show, follow us on YouTube.

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We would also love for you to drop us a rating on your favorite.

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Podcast platform and share our show with your friends.

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You can catch us on all the social medias at Bite at a Time Books.

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We are currently running a contest on our social media for the duration of season ten to win a copy of the complete Anif Green Gables series.

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Today we will be continuing Anif Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

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Chapter 17 A New Interest in Life the next afternoon, Anne, bending over her patchwork at the kitchen window, happened to glance out and beheld diana, down by the dryad's bubble, beckoning mysteriously in a trice.

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Anne was out of the house and flying down to the hollow, astonishment and hope struggling in her expressive eyes.

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But the hope faded when she saw Diana's dejected countenance.

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Your mother hasn't relented.

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She gasped.

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Diana shook her head mournfully no.

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And oh, Anne, she says I'm never to play with you again.

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I've cried and cried, and I told her it wasn't your fault, but it wasn't any use I had ever had such a time.

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Coaxing her to let me come down and say goodbye to you.

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She said I was only to stay ten minutes, and she's timing me by the clock.

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Ten minutes isn't a very long time.

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To say an eternal farewell, in, said Anne tearfully.

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Oh, Diana, will you promise faithfully never to forget me, the friend of your youth, no matter what dear friends may caress thee?

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Indeed I will, sobbed Diana.

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And I'll never have another bosom friend I don't want to have.

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I couldn't love anybody as I love you.

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Oh, Diana.

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Cried Anne, clasping her hands.

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Do you love me?

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Why, of course I do.

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Didn't you know that?

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No.

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Anne drew a long breath.

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I thought you liked me, of course, but I never hoped you loved me.

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Why, Diana, I didn't think anybody could love me.

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Nobody else has loved me since I can remember.

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Oh, this is wonderful.

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It's a ray of light which will forever shine on the darkness of a path severed from thee, Diana.

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Oh, just say it once again.

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I love you devotedly, Anne, said Diana staunchly.

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And I always will, you may be sure of that.

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And I will always love thee.

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Diana, said Anne, solemnly extending her hand.

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In the years to come, thy memory will shine like a star over my lonely life.

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As that last story we read together says Diana.

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Wilt thou give me a lock of thy jet black tresses and parting to treasure forever more?

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Have you got anything to cut it with?

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Queried Diana, wiping away the tears which Anne's affecting accents had caused to flow afresh and returning to practicalities.

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Yes, I've got my patchwork scissors in my apron pocket.

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Fortunately, said Anne.

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She solemnly clipped one of Diana's curls.

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Fare thee well, my beloved friend.

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Henceforth we must be a stranger so living side by side, but my heart will ever be faithful to thee.

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Anne stood and watched Diana out of sight, mournfully, waving her hand to the latter whenever she looked back.

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Then she returned to the house, not a little consoled for the time being by this romantic parting.

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It's all over, she informed Marilla.

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I shall never have another friend.

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I'm really worse off than ever before, for I haven't Katy, Maurice and Violetta now, and even if I had, it wouldn't be the same.

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Somehow little dream girls are not satisfying after a real friend.

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Diana and I had such an affecting farewell down by the spring, it will be sacred in my memory forever.

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I used the most pathetic language I could think of and said, thou and thee, thou and thee seems so much more romantic than you.

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Diana gave me a lock of her hair, and I'm going to sew it up in a little bag and wear it around my neck all my life.

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Please see that this is buried with me, for I don't believe I'll live very long.

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Perhaps when she sees me lying cold and dead before her, mrs.

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Barry may feel remorse for what she has done and will let Diana come to my funeral.

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I don't think there's much fear of your dying of grief as long as you can talk, Anne, said Marilla, unsympathetically.

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The following Monday, Anne surprised Marilla by coming down from her room with her basket of books on her arm and hip and her lips prammed up into a line of determination.

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I'm going back to school, she announced.

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That is all there is left in life for me.

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Now that my friend has been ruthlessly torn from me in school.

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I can look at her and muse over days departed.

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You'd better muse over your lessons and sums, said Marilla, concealing her delight at this development of the situation.

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If you're going back to school, I hope we'll hear no more of breaking slates over people's heads and such carryings on.

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Behave yourself and do just what your teacher tells you.

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I'll try to be a model pupil, agreed Anne dolefully.

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There won't be much fun in it, I expect.

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Mr.

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Phillips said Many Andrews was a model pupil and there isn't a spark of imagination or life in her.

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She's just dull and pokey and never seems to have a good time.

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But I feel so depressed that perhaps it will come easy to me now I'm going round by the road.

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I couldn't bear to go by the birch path all alone.

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I should weep bitter tears if I did.

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Anne was welcomed back to school with open arms.

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Her imagination had been sorely missed in games, her voice in the singing, and her dramatic ability in the perusal aloud of books.

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At dinner hour, ruby Gillis smuggled three blue plums over to her during testament reading.

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Ella May McPherson gave her an enormous yellow pansy cut from the covers of a floral catalog, a species of dusk decoration much prized in Avonlea school.

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Sophia Sloane offered to teach her a perfectly elegant new pattern of knit lace, so nice for trimming aprons.

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Katie Bolter gave her a perfume bottle to keep slate water in, and Julie Bell copied carefully on a piece of pale pink paper scalloped on the edges to follow effusion to Anne when twilight.

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Drops her curtain down and pins it with a star.

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Remember that you have a friend though she may wander far.

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It is so nice to be appreciated.

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Sighed Anne, rapturously to Marilla that night.

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The girls were not the only scholars who appreciated her.

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When Anne went to her seat after dinner hour, she had been told by Mr.

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Phillips to sit with the model Minnie Andrews.

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She found on her desk a big luscious strawberry apple.

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Anne caught it up already to take.

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A bite when she remembered that the only place in Avonlea where strawberry apples grew was in the old Blithe orchard on the other side of the Lake of Shining Waters, and dropped the apple as if it were a redhot coal, and Ostentatiously wiped her fingers on her handkerchief.

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The apple lay untouched on her desk until the next morning, when little Timothy Andrews, who slept the school and kindled the fire, annexed it as one of his prerequisites.

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Charlie Sloane slate pencil gorgeously bedisoned with striped red and yellow paper costing two cent, where ordinary pencils cost only one, which he sent up to her after dinner hour, met with a more favorable reception.

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Anne was graciously pleased to accept it and rewarded the donor with a smile which exalted that infatuated youth straight away into the 7th Heaven of Delight, and caused him to make such fearful errors in his dictation that Mr.

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Phillips kept him in after school to rewrite it.

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But as the Caesar's Pageant shorn of Brutus's bust did but of Rome's best son remind her more so the marked absence of any tribute or recognition from Diana Barry, who was sitting with Gerty pi and bittered Anne's little triumph.

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Diana might just have smiled at me once.

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I think she mourned to Marilla that night.

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But the next morning a note most.

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Fearfully and wonderfully twisted and folded, and a small parcel were passed across to Anne.

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Dear Anne, ran the former mother says.

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I'm not to play with you or.

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Talk to you even in school.

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It isn't my fault.

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And don't be cross at me because I love you as much as ever.

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I miss you awfully to tell all my secrets to, and I don't like.

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Gerdie pie one bit.

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I made you one of the new bookmarkers out of red tissue paper.

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They're awfully fashionable now, and only three girls in school know how to make them.

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When you look at it, remember your true friend, Diana Barry.

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Anne read the note, kissed the bookmark and dispatched a prompt reply back to the other side of the school.

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My own darling Diana, of course I'm.

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Not cross at you because you have.

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To obey your mother.

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Our spirits can commune.

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I shall keep your lovely present forever.

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Minnie Andrews is a very nice little girl, although she has no imagination.

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But after having been Diana's bosom friend, I cannot be minis.

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Please excuse mistakes because my spelling isn't very good yet, although much improved yours.

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Until death us do part.

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Anne or Cordelia Shirley P-S-I shall sleep with your letter under my pillow tonight.

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A or CS marilla pessimistically expected more trouble since Anne had again begun to go to school, but none developed.

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Perhaps Anne caught something of the model spirit from many Andrews.

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At least she got on very well with Mr.

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Phillips.

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Thenceforth she flung herself into her studies, heart and soul, determined not to be outdone in any class by Gilbert Blithe.

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The rivalry between them was soon apparent.

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It was entirely goodnatured on Gilbert's side, but it is much to be feared that the same thing cannot be said of Anne, who had certainly an unpreceworthy tenacity for holding grudges.

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She was as intense in her hatreds as in her loves.

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She would not stoop to admit that.

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She meant to rival Gilbert in schoolwork because that would have been to acknowledge his existence, which Anne persistently ignored.

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But the rivalry was there, and honors fluctuated between them.

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Now Gilbert was head of the spelling class.

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Now Anne, with a toss of her long red braid, spelled him down.

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One morning Gilbert had all his sums done correctly and had his name written on the blackboard on the roll of honor.

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The next morning, Anne, having wrestled wildly with decimals the entire evening before, would be first one awful day.

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They were ties, and their names were written up together.

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It was almost as bad as a take notice, and Anne's mortification was as evident as Gilbert's satisfaction when the written examinations at the end of each month were held.

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The suspense was terrible.

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The first month, Gilbert came out three marks ahead the second, and beat him by five.

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But her triumph was marred by the.

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Fact that Gilbert congratulated her heartily before the whole school.

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It would have been ever so much sweeter to her if he had felt the sting of his defeat.

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Mr.

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Phillips might not be a very good teacher.

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But a pupil so inflexibly determined on learning as Anne was, could hardly escape making progress under any kind of teacher.

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By the end of the term, Anne and Gilbert were both promoted into the fifth class and allowed to begin studying the elements of the branches by which Latin, Geometry, French, and algebra were meant.

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In geometry, Anne met her Waterloo.

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It's perfectly awful stuff, Marilla, she groaned.

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I'm sure I'll never be able to make head or tail of it.

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There's no scope for imagination in it at all.

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Mr.

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Phillips says I'm the worst dunce he ever saw at it.

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And Gill, I mean, some of the others are so smart at it.

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It's extremely mortifying, Marilla.

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Even Diana gets along better than I do.

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But I don't mind being beaten by Diana.

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Even although we meet as strangers now, I still love her with an indistinguishable love.

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It makes me very sad at times to think about her.

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But really, Marla, one can't stay sad very long in such an interesting world, can one?

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Thank you for joining Bite at a Time Books today.

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Well, we read a bite of one.

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Of your favorite classics.

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If you enjoy our show, be sure to follow us so you get all the new episodes.

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If you want to see exclusive behind the scenes of our show, follow us on YouTube.

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We would also love for you to drop us a rating on your favorite.

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Podcast platform and share our show with your friends.

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You can catch us on all the social medias at Bite at a Time Books.

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We are currently running a contest on our social media for the duration of season ten to win a copy of the complete ANAF Green Gables series.

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