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Anne of the Island - Garlands of Autumn
Episode 227th August 2022 • Bite at a Time Books • Bree Carlile
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Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the second chapter of Anne of the Island 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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Let's see what we can find.

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Take your chapter by chapter one by so many adventures and mountains we can climb 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 love to read and wanted to share 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 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 or on our website, Bite at a Time Books.com.

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

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Chapter Two garlands of autumn the following week sped swiftly, crowded with innumerable last things, as Anne called them.

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Goodbye calls had to be made and received, being pleasant or otherwise according to whether callers and called upon were heartily in sympathy with Anne's hopes or thought she was too much puffed up over going to college, and that it was their duty to take her down a peg or two.

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The Avis gave a farewell party in honor of Anne and Gilbert one evening at the home of Josie Pi, choosing that place partly because Mr.

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Pie's house was large and convenient, partly because it was strongly suspected that the Pie girls would have nothing to do with the affair if their offer of the house for the party was not accepted.

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It was a very pleasant little time, for the Pie girls were gracious and said, and did nothing to mar the harmony of the occasion, which was not according to their want.

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Josie was unusually amiable, so much so that she even remarked condescendingly to Anne your new dress is rather becoming to you, Anne.

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Really?

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You look almost pretty in it.

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How kind of you to say so, responded Anne with dancing eyes.

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Her sense of humor was developing, and the speeches that would have hurt her at 14 were becoming merely food for amusement.

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Now, Josie suspected that Anne was laughing at her behind those wicked eyes, but she contented herself with whispering to Gerdy as they went downstairs that Aunt Shirley would put on more airs than ever now that she was going to college.

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You'd see, all the old crowd was there, full of mirth and zest and youthful lightheartedness.

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Diana Barry, rosy and dimpled, shadowed by the faithful.

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Fred Jane Andrews, neat and sensible and plain.

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Ruby Gillis, looking her handsomest and brightest in a cream silk blouse with red geraniums and her golden hair.

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Gilbert Blithe and Charlie Sloane, both trying to keep as near the elusive Anne as possible.

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Carrie Sloane, looking pale and melancholy, because, so it was reported, her father would not allow Oliver Kimball to come near the place.

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Moody Spurgeon McPherson, whose round face and objectionable ears were as round and objectionable as ever, and Billy Andrews, who sat in a corner all the evening, chuckled when anyone spoke to him and watched Anne Shirley with a grin of pleasure on his broad freckled countenance.

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Anne had known beforehand of the party, but she had not known that she and Gilbert were, as the founders of the society, to be presented with a very complimentary address and tokens of respect, in her case, a volume of Shakespeare's plays in Gilbert's a fountain pen.

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She was so taken by surprise and pleased by the nice things said in the address, red and Moody Spurgeon's most solemn and ministerial tones, that the tears quite drowned the sparkle of her big gray eyes.

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She had worked hard and faithfully for the avis, and it warmed the cockles of her heart that the members appreciated her efforts so sincerely, and they were all so nice and friendly and jolly.

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Even the pie girls had their merits at that moment.

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Anne loved all the world.

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She enjoyed the evening tremendously, but the end of it rather spoiled all.

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Gilbert again made the mistake of saying something sentimental to her as they ate their supper on the moonlit veranda.

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And Anne, to punish him, was gracious to Charlie Sloan and allowed the latter to walk home with her.

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She found, however, that revenge hurts nobody quite so much as the one who tries to inflict it.

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Gilbert walked airily off with Ruby Gillis, and Anne could hear them laughing and talking gayly as they loitered along in the still, crisp autumn air.

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They were evidently having the best of good times.

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While she was horribly bored by Charlie Sloan.

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Who talked unbrokenly on and never.

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Even by accident.

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Said one thing that was worth listening to.

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Anne gave an occasional absent yes or no and thought how beautiful Ruby had looked that night.

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How very goggily Charlie's eyes were in the moonlight worse even than by daylight.

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And that the world somehow wasn't quite such a nice place as she had believed it to be earlier in the evening.

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I'm just tired out.

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That's what is the matter with me, she said, when she thankfully found herself alone in her own room, and she honestly believed it was but a certain little gush of joy, as from some secret unknown spring bubbled up in her heart the next evening when she saw Gilbert striding down through the haunted wood and crossing the old log bridge with that firm, quick step of his.

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So Gilbert was not going to spend this last evening with Ruby Gillis after all.

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You look tired, Anne, he said.

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I am tired.

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And worse than that, I'm disgruntled.

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I'm tired because I've been packing my trunk and sewing all day, but I'm disgruntled because six women have been here to say goodbye to me.

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And every one of the six managed to say something that seemed to take the color right out of life and leave it as gray and dismal and cheerless as a November morning.

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Spiteful old cats, was Gilbert's elegant comment.

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Oh, no, they weren't, said Anne seriously.

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That is just the trouble.

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If they had been spiteful cats, I wouldn't have minded them.

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But they are all nice, kind, motherly souls who like me and whom I like.

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And that is why what they said or hinted had such undue weight with me.

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They let me see they thought I was crazy going to Redmond and trying to take a BA, and ever since I've been wondering if I am.

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Mrs.

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Peter Sloane sighed and said she hoped my strength would hold out till I got through.

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And at once I saw myself a hopeless victim of nervous prostration.

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At the end of my third year, Mrs.

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Ebin wright said it must cost an awful lot to put in four years at Redmond.

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And I felt all over me that it was unpardonable of me to squander Marilla's money and my own on such a folly.

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Mrs.

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Jasper Bell said she hoped I wouldn't let college spoil me as it did some people.

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And I felt in my bones that the end of my four Redmond years would see me a most insufferable creature, thinking I knew it all and looking down on everything and everybody in Avon Lee.

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Mrs.

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Elisha Wright said she understood that Redmond girls, especially those who belonged to kingsport, were dreadfully dressy and stuck up, and she guessed I wouldn't feel much at home among them.

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And I saw myself a snubbed, dowdy, humiliated country girl shuffling through Redmond's classic halls and coppertoned boots.

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Anne ended with a laugh and a sigh, commingled with her sensitive nature.

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All disapproval had weight, even the disapproval of those for whose opinions she had scant respect.

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For the time being, life was saverless and ambition had gone out like a snuffed candle.

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You surely don't care for what they said, protested Gilbert.

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You know exactly how narrow their outlook on life is.

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Excellent creatures though they are, to do anything they have never done is anathema.

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Martha, you are the first aven Lee girl who has ever gone to college, and you know that all pioneers are considered to be afflicted with moonstruck madness.

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Oh, I know.

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But feeling is so different from knowing.

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My common sense tells me all you can say.

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But there are times when common sense has no power over me.

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Common nonsense takes possession of my soul.

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Really, after Miss Elisha went away, I hardly had the heart to finish packing.

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You're just tired, Anne.

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Come, forget it all and take a walk with me.

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A ramble back through the woods beyond the marsh.

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There should be something there I want to show you.

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Should be?

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Don't you know if it's there?

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No.

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I only know it should be from something I saw there in spring.

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Come on.

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We'll pretend we're two children again and will go the way of the wind.

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They started gaily off, and remembering the unpleasantness of the preceding evening was very nice to Gilbert.

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And Gilbert, who was learning wisdom, took care to be nothing, saved the schoolboy comrade again.

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Mrs.

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Lynde and Marilla watched them from the kitchen window.

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That will be a match someday, Mrs.

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Lynn said approvingly.

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Marilla winced slightly in her heart.

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She hoped it would, but it went against her grain to hear the matter spoken of in Mrs.

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Lynn's gossipy.

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Matter of fact way.

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There are only children yet, she said shortly.

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Mrs.

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Lind laughed good naturedly.

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Anne is 18.

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I was married when I was that age.

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We old folks, Marilla, are too much given to thinking.

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Children never grow up, that's what.

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Anne is a young woman and Gilbert is a man, and he worships the ground she walks on.

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As anyone can see, he's a fine fellow, and Anne can't do better.

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I hope she won't get any romantic nonsense into her head at Redmond.

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I don't approve of them coeducational places and never did.

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That's what I don't believe, concluded Mrs.

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Lynde solemnly, that the students at such colleges ever do much else than flirt.

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They must study a little, said Marilla with a smile.

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Precious little Sniffed.

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Mrs.

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Rachel.

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However, I think Anne will.

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She never was flirtatious, but she doesn't appreciate Gilbert at his full value, that's what.

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Oh, I know, girls.

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Charlie Sloan is wild about her too, but I'd never advise her to marry a Sloan.

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The Sloans are good, honest, respectable people, of course, but when all said and done, they're Sloans.

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Marilla nodded.

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To an outsider, the statement that Sloans were Sloans might not be very illuminating, but she understood.

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Every village has such a family.

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Good, honest, respectable people they may be, but Sloans they are, and mustever remain, though they speak with the tongues of men and angels.

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Gilbert and Anne, happily unconscious that their future was thus being settled by Mrs.

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Rachel, were sauntering through the shadows of the haunted wood.

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Beyond.

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The harvest hills were basking in an amber sunset, radiance under a pale aerial sky of rose and blue.

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The distant spruce groves were burnished bronze, and their long shadows barred the upland meadows.

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But around them a little wind sang among the fur castles, and in it there was the note of autumn.

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This wood really is haunted now by old memories, said Anne, stooping to gather a spray of ferns bleached to wax and whiteness by frost.

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It seems to me that the little girls Diana and I used to be play here still and sit by the dryad's bubble in the twilights, twisting with the ghosts.

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Do you know, I can never go up this path in the dusk without feeling a bit of the old fright and shiver?

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There was one especially horrifying phantom which we created the ghost of the murdered child that crept up behind you and laid cold fingers on yours.

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I confess that to this day I cannot help fancying its little furtive footsteps behind me when I come here after nightfall.

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I'm not afraid of the white lady or the headless man or the skeletons, but I wish I had never imagined that baby's ghost into existence.

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How angry Marilla and Mrs.

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Barry were over that affair, concluded Anne with reminiscent laughter.

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The woods around the head of the marsh were full of purple vistas threaded with gossamers.

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Past a dower plantation of gnarled spruces and a maple fringed sunwarm valley they found that something Gilbert was looking for.

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Ah, here it is, he said with satisfaction.

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An apple tree.

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And away back here, exclaimed Anne, delightedly.

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Yes, a veritable applebearing apple tree, too.

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Here in the very midst of pines and beaches, a mile away from any orchard.

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I was here one day last spring and found it all white with blossom.

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So I resolved I'd come again in the fall and see if it had been apples.

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See, it's loaded.

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They look good, too, Tanya's Russet, but with a dusky red cheek.

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Most wild seedlings are green and uninviting.

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I suppose it sprang years ago from some chants on seed, said Anne dreamily, and how it has grown and flourished and held its own here, all alone among aliens, the brave, determined thing.

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Here's a fallen tree with a cushion of moth.

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Sit down, Anne.

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It will serve for a woodland throne.

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I'll climb for some apples.

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They all grow high.

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The tree had to reach up to the sunlight.

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The apples proved to be delicious under the tawny skin, with a white, white flesh faintly veined with red.

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And besides their own proper apple taste, they had a certain wild, delightful tang no orchard grown apple ever possessed.

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The fatal apple of Eden couldn't have had a rarer flavor, commented Anne.

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But it's time we were going home.

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See, it was twilight three minutes ago, and now it's moonlight.

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What a pity we couldn't have caught the moment of transformation.

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But such moments never are caught, I suppose.

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Let's go back around the marsh and home by way of Lovers Lane.

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Do you feel as disgruntled now as when you started out, Anne?

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Not I.

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Those apples have been as mana to my hungry soul.

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I feel that I shall love Redmond and have a splendid four years there.

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And after those four years what?

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Oh, there's another bend in the road at their end, answered Anne lightly.

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I have no idea what may be around it.

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I don't want to have it's.

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Nicer not to know.

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Lover's Lane was a dear place that night, still and mysteriously dim in the pale radiance of the moonlight.

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They loitered through it in a pleasant, chummy silence, neither caring to talk.

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If Gilbert were always as he had been this evening, how nice and simple everything would be, reflected Anne.

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Gilbert was looking at Anne as she walked along in her light dress.

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With her slender delicacy, she made him think of a white iris.

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I wonder if I can ever make her care for me, he thought with a pang of selfdistrust.

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Thank you for joining Bite at the Time Books today while we read a bite of one 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 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 or on our website, Bite at a Time Books.com.

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