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

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Let's see what we can find.

Take your chapter by chapter one by adventures and mountains we can climb.

Take it worth a word line, but line one part at a time.

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

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My name is Brie Carlyle, and I love to read and wanted to share my passion with listeners like you.

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Today we'll be continuing Anne of the island by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

Chapter 18 miss Josephine Remembers the Aunt Girl when Christmas holidays came, the girls of Patty's Place scattered to their respective homes, but Aunt James elected to stay where she was.

I couldn't go to any of the places I've been invited and take those.

Three cats, she said, and I'm not.

Going to leave the poor creatures here alone for nearly three weeks.

If we had any decent neighbors who would feed them, I might.

But there's nothing except millionaires on this street.

So I'll stay here and keep Patty's Place warm for you, and went home.

With the usual joyous anticipations, which were not wholly fulfilled.

She found Avonlea in the grip of such an early, cold and stormy winter as even the oldest inhabitant could not recall.

Green Gables was literally hemmed in by huge drifts almost every day of that illstarred vacation it stormed fiercely, and even on fine days it drifted unceasingly.

No sooner were the roads broken than they filled in again.

It was almost impossible to stir out.

The Avis tried on three evenings to have a party in honor of the college students, and on each evening the storm was so wild that nobody could go.

So they gave up the attempt in despair.

Anne, despite her love of and loyalty to Green Gables, could not help thinking longingly of Patty's Place, its cozy open fire, aunt Jam, Zena's, Mirthful eyes, the three cats, the merry chatter of the girls, the pleasantness of Friday evenings when college friends dropped in to talk of grave and gay.

Anne was lonely.

Diana, during the whole of the holidays, was imprisoned at home with a bad attack of bronchitis.

She could not come to Green Gables, and it was rarely Anne could get to Orchard Slope, for the old way through.

The haunted wood was impassable with drifts, and the long way over the frozen lake of Shining Waters was almost as bad.

Ruby Gillis was sleeping in the white heaped graveyard.

Jane Andrews was teaching a school on Western Prairies.

Gilbert to be sure, was still faithful and waited up to Green Gables every possible evening.

But Gilbert's visits were not what they once were.

Anne almost dreaded them.

It was very disconcerting to look up in the midst of a sudden silence and find Gilbert's hazel eyes fixed upon her with a quite unmistakable expression in their grave depths.

And it was still more disconcerting to find herself blushing hotly and uncomfortably under his gaze, just as if well, it was very embarrassing.

Anne wished herself back at Patty's place, where there was always somebody else about to take the edge off a delicate situation at Green Gables.

Marilla went promptly to Mrs.

Lynn's domain when Gilbert came and insisted on taking the twins with her.

The significance of this was unmistakable, and Anne was in a helpless fury over it.

Davy, however, was perfectly happy.

He reveled in getting out in the morning and shoveling out the paths to the well and hen house.

He gloried in the Christmas tide delicacies which Marilla and Mrs.

Lynd vied with each other in preparing for Anne.

And he was reading an enthralling tale in a school library book of a wonderful hero who seemed blessed with the miraculous faculty for getting into scrapes from which he was usually delivered by an earthquake or volcanic explosion which blew him high and dry out of his troubles, land at him in a fortune, and close the story with proper eclet.

I tell you, it's a bully story.

Anne, he said ecstatically.

I'd ever so much rather read it than the Bible would you?

Smiled Anne.

Davy peered curiously at her.

You don't seem a bit shocked, Anne.

Mrs.

Lind was awful shocked when I said it to her.

No, I'm not shocked, Davy.

I think it's quite natural that a nine year old boy would sooner read an adventure story than the Bible.

But when you are older, I hope and think that you will realize what a wonderful book the Bible is.

Oh, I think some parts of it are fine, conceded Davy.

That story about Joseph, now it's bully.

But if I'd been Joseph, I wouldn't have forgive the brothers.

No siri, Anne.

I'd have cut all their heads off.

Mrs.

Lind was awful mad when I said that and shut the Bible up and said she'd never read me any more of it if I talked like that, so I don't talk now when she reads it.

Sunday afternoons, I just think things and say them to Milty Bolter.

Next day in school, I told Milty the story about Elisha and the bears, and it scared him so he's never made fun of Mr.

Harrison's Ball head once.

Are there any bears on PE Island, Anne?

I want to know.

Not nowadays, said Anne absently as the wind blew a scud of snow against the window.

Oh, dear.

Will it ever stop storming?

God knows, said Davy airily, preparing to resume his reading.

Anne was shocked this time, Davy.

She exclaimed reproachfully.

Mrs.

Lynn says that, protested Davey.

One night last week, Marilla said.

Will Ludovic Speed and Theodora Dicks ever get married?

And Mrs.

Lynn said, God knows.

Just like that.

Well, it wasn't right for her to say it, said Anne promptly, deciding upon which horn of this dilemma to impale herself.

It isn't right for anybody to take that name in vain or speak it lightly.

Davy, don't ever do it again.

Not if I say it slow and solemn like the minister queried Davy gravely.

No, not even then.

Well, I won't.

Ludovic's Speed and Theodora Dicks live in Middle Grafton and Mrs.

Rachel says he has been courting her for 100 years.

Won't they soon be too old to get married?

Anne?

I hope Gilbert won't court you that long.

When are you going to be married, Anne?

Mrs.

Lynd.

Says it's a sure thing.

Mrs.

Lynde is a, began Anne hotly, then stopped.

Awful old gossip, completed Davy calmly.

That's what everyone calls her.

But is it a sure thing, Anne?

I want to know.

You are a very silly little boy, Davy, said Anne, stalking Haughtily out of the room.

The kitchen was deserted, and she sat down by the window in the fast falling, wintry twilight.

The sun had set and the wind had died down.

A pale, chilly moon looked out behind a bank of purple clouds in the west.

The sky faded out, but the strip of yellow along the western horizon grew brighter and fiercer, as if all the stray gleams of light were concentrating in one spot.

The distant hills rimmed with priestlike FIRs stood out in dark distinctness against it and looked across the still white fields, cold and lifeless in the harsh light of that grim sunset.

Inside she was very lonely, and she was sad at heart, for she was wondering if she would be able to return to Redmond next year.

It did not seem likely.

The only scholarship possible in the sophomore year was a very small affair.

She would not take Marilla's money, and there seemed little prospect of being able to earn enough in the summer vacation.

I suppose I'll just have to drop out next year, she thought drearily, and teach a district school again until I earn enough to finish my course.

And by that time all my old class will have graduated and Patty's place will be out of the question.

But there I'm not going to be a coward.

I'm thankful I can earn my way through if necessary.

Here's mr Harrison waiting up the lane, announced Davy.

Running out.

I hope he's brought the mail.

It's three days since we got it.

I want to see what them pesky grits are doing.

I'm a conservative, Anne, and I tell you, you have to keep your eye on them grits.

Mr.

Harrison had brought the mail, and Mary letters from Stella and Priscilla and Phil soon dissipated.

Anne's Blues.

Anne Jane Zena, too, had written, saying that she was keeping the hearthfire alight and that the cats were all well and the house plants doing fine.

The weather has been real cold, she wrote.

So I let the cat sleep in the house, rusty and Joseph on the sofa in the living room, and the sarah cat on the foot of my bed.

It's real comfort to hear her purring when I wake up in the night and think of my poor daughter in the foreign field.

If it was anywhere but in India, I wouldn't worry.

But they say the snakes out there are terrible.

It takes all the sarah cats purring to drive away the thoughts of those snakes.

I have enough faith for everything but the snakes.

I can't think why Providence ever made them.

Sometimes I don't think he did.

I'm inclined to believe the old Harry had a hand in making them.

Anne had left a thin typewritten communication till the last, thinking it unimportant.

When she had read it, she sat very still with tears in her eyes.

What is the matter, Anne?

Asked Marilla.

Ms.

Josephine Berry is dead, said Anne in a low tone.

So she has gone at last, said Marilla.

Well, she has been sick for over a year, and the berries have been expecting to hear of her death any time.

It is while she is at rest, for she has suffered dreadfully.

Anne, she was always kind to you.

She has been kind to the last.

Marilla, this letter is from her lawyer.

She has left me $1,000 in her will.

Gracious.

Isn't that an awful lot of money?

Exclaimed Davy.

She's the woman you and Diana lit.

On when you jumped into the spare room bed, ain't she?

Diana told me that story.

Is that why she left you so much?

Hush, davy said Anne Gently.

She slipped away to the porch gable with a full heart, leaving Marilla and Mrs.

Lynde to talk over the news to their heart's content.

Do you suppose Anne will ever get married now?

Speculated davy Anxiously.

When dorky Sloane got married?

Last summer.

She said if she'd had enough money to live on, she'd never have been bothered with a man.

But even a widower with eight children was better than living with a sisterinlaw.

Davey Keith, do hold your tongue, said Mrs.

Rachel severely.

The way you talk is scandalous for.

A small boy, that's what.

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