Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the forty-first 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!

Follow, rate, and review Bite at a Time Books where we read you your favorite classics, one bite at a time. Available wherever you listen to podcasts.

Check out our website!

Get exclusive Behind the Scenes content on our YouTube!

We are now part of the Bite at a Time Books Productions network!

If you ever wondered what inspired your favorite classic novelist to write their stories, what was happening in their lives or the world at the time, check out Bite at a Time Books Behind the Story wherever you listen to podcasts.

Follow us on all the socials: Instagram - Twitter - Facebook - TikTok

Follow Bree at: Instagram - Twitter - Facebook

Take a look at.

Let's see what we can find.

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

Take it worth a word line, but line.

One bite at a time.

My name is Brie Carlyle and I love to read.

I wanted to share my passion with listeners like you.

If you enjoy the podcast, tag us in your social media posts at Bite at a Time Books and you'll be featured in our new Shout Out Saturday segment.

At the end of each week, we'll be including a special Shoutout Saturday episode featuring whoever tagged us that week.

Be sure to follow my show on your favorite podcast platform so you get all the new episodes.

You can find most of our links in the show notes, but also on our website.

Biteeditimebooks.com includes all of the links for our show, including to our patreon to support the show, and YouTube, where we have special behind the narration of the episodes.

We are part of the Bite at a Time Books Productions network.

If you'd also like to hear what inspired your favorite classic author to write their novels and what was going on.

In the world at the time, check.

Out the Bite at a Time Books Behind the Story podcast.

Wherever you listen to podcasts today, we'll.

Be continuing Anne of the island by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

Chapter 41 love Takes Up the Glass.

Of Time I've come to ask you to go for one of our old time rambles through September woods and over hills where spices grow.

This afternoon, said Gilbert, coming suddenly around the porch corner.

Suppose we visit Hester gray's garden and, sitting on the stone step with her.

Lap full of a pale, filmy green stuff, looked up rather blankly.

Oh, I wish I could, she said slowly.

But I really can't.

Gilbert.

I'm going to Alice Penhello's wedding this evening.

You know, I've got to do something to this dress, and by the time it's finished, I'll have to get ready.

I'm so sorry.

I'd love to go.

Well, can you go tomorrow afternoon, then?

Asked Gilbert, apparently not much disappointed.

Yes, I think so.

In that case, I shall hide me home at once to do something I should otherwise have to do tomorrow.

So Alice Pennholow is to be married tonight.

Three weddings for you and one summer anne, Phil's, Alice's and Jane's.

I'll never forgive Jane for not inviting me to her wedding.

You really can't blame her when you think of the tremendous Andrews connection who had to be invited.

The house could hardly hold them all.

I was only bitten by grace of being Jane's old chum, at least on Jane's part.

I think Mrs.

Harmon's motive for inviting me was to let me see Jane's surpassing gorgeousness.

Is it true that she wore so many diamonds that you couldn't tell where the diamonds left off?

And Jane began and laughed.

She certainly wore a good many.

What with all the diamonds and white satin and tool and lace and roses and orange blossoms.

Prim.

Little Jane was almost lost to sight, but she was very happy, and so was Mr.

Inglis and so was Mrs.

Harmon.

Is that the dress you're going to wear tonight?

Asked Gilbert, looking down at the fluffs and frills.

Yes, isn't it pretty?

And I shall wear starflowers in my hair.

The hunted wood is full of them.

This summer Gilbert had a sudden vision of Anne.

A raid in a frilly green gown with the virginal curves of arms and throat slipping out of it and white stars shining against the coils of her ruddy hair.

The vision made him catch his breath, but he turned slightly away.

Well, I'll be up tomorrow.

Hope you'll have a nice time tonight.

Anne looked after him as he strode away and sighed.

Gilbert was friendly, very friendly.

Far too friendly.

He had come quite often to Green Gables after his recovery and something of their old comradeship had returned, but Anne no longer found it satisfying.

The rose of love made the blossom of friendship pale and scentless by contrast.

And Anne had again begun to doubt if Gilbert now felt anything for her but friendship in the common light of common day.

Her radiant certainty of that rapped morning had faded.

She was haunted by a miserable fear that her mistake could never be rectified.

It was quite likely that it was Christine whom Gilbert loved after all.

Perhaps he was even engaged to her and tried to put all unsettling hopes out of her heart and reconcile herself to a future where work and ambition must take the place of love.

She could do good, if not noble.

Work is a teacher and the success her little sketches were beginning to meet with in certain editorial sanctums augered well for her budding literary dreams.

But Anne picked up her green dress inside again.

When Gilbert came the next afternoon, he found Anne waiting for him fresh as the dawn and fare as a star after all the gayety of the preceding night.

She wore a green dress, not the one she had worn to the wedding, but an old one, which Gilbert had told her at a redmond reception he liked especially.

It was just the shade of green that brought out the rich tints of her hair and the starry grey of her eyes and the Irish like delicacy of her skin.

Gilbert, glancing at her sideways as they walked along a shadowy wood path, thought she had never looked so lovely and glancing sideways at Gilbert now and then, thought how much older he looked since his illness.

It was as if he had put.

Boyhood behind him forever.

The day was beautiful, and the way was beautiful.

Anne was almost sorry when they reached hester gray's garden and sat down on the old bench.

But it was beautiful there too, as.

Beautiful as it had been on the.

Faraway day of the golden picnic when Diana and Jane and Priscilla and she had found it.

Then it had been lovely with narcissus and violets.

Now goldenrod had kindled its fairy torches in the corners, and asters dotted it bluely.

The call of the brook came up through the woods from the valley of birches with all its old.

allurement the mellow air was full of the purr of the sea.

Beyond were fields rimmed by fences bleached silvery gray in the suns of many summers, and long hills scarfed with the shadows of autumnal clouds with the blowing of the west wind.

Old dreams returned.

I think, said Anne softly, that the land where dreams come true is in the blue haze yonder over that little valley.

Have you any unfulfilled dreams, Anne?

Asked Gilbert.

Something in his tone, something she had not heard since that miserable evening in the orchard at Patty's place made Anne's heart beat wildly, but she made answer lightly.

Of course.

Everybody has.

It wouldn't do for us to have all our dreams fulfilled.

We would be as good as dead if we had nothing left to dream about.

What a delicious aroma that low descending sun is extracting from the asters and ferns.

I wish we could see perfumes as well as smell them.

I'm sure they would be very beautiful.

Gilbert was not to be thus sidetracked.

I have a dream, he said slowly.

I persist in dreaming it, although it has often seemed to me that it could never come true.

I dream of a home with a.

Hearthfire in it, a cat and dog.

The footsteps of friends and you.

Anne wanted to speak, but she could find no words.

Happiness was breaking over her like a wave.

It almost frightened her.

I asked you a question over two years ago, Anne.

If I ask it again today, will you give me a different answer?

Still?

Anne could not speak, but she lifted her eyes, shining with all the love rapture of countless generations, and looked into his for a moment.

He wanted no other answer.

They lingered in the old garden until twilight sweeted dusk, and Eden must have been crept over it.

There was so much to talk over and recall, things said and done and heard and thought and felt and misunderstood.

I thought you loved Christine Stewart, Anne told him, as reproachfully as if she had not given him every reason to suppose that she loved Roy Gardner.

Gilbert laughed.

Boyishly, Christine was engaged to somebody in her hometown.

I knew it, and she knew I knew it.

When her brother graduated, he told me his sister was coming to Kingsport the next winter to take music and asked me if I would look after her a bit, as she knew no one and would be very lonely.

So I did.

And then I liked Christine for her own sake.

She's one of the nicest girls I've ever known.

I knew college gossip credited us with being in love with each other.

I didn't care.

Nothing mattered much to me for a time there, after you told me you.

Could never love me.

Anne, there was nobody else.

There never could be anyone else for me but you.

I've loved you ever since that day you broke your slate over my head in school.

I don't see how you could keep on loving me when I was such a little fool, said Anne.

Well, I tried to stop, said Gilbert frankly.

Not because I thought you what you.

Call yourself, but because I felt sure.

There was no chance for me after Gardner came on the scene.

But I couldn't.

And I can't tell you either what it meant for me these two years.

To believe you were going to marry him and be told every week by.

Some busy body that your engagement was on the point of being announced.

I believed it until one blessed day when I was sitting up after the fever, I got a letter from Phil.

Gordon phil Blake rather, in which she.

Told me there was really nothing between you and Roy and advised me to try again while the doctor was amazed at my rapid recovery.

After that, anne laughed, then shivered.

I could never forget the night I thought you were dying, Gilbert.

Oh, I knew.

I knew then and I thought it was too late.

But it wasn't, sweetheart.

Oh, Anne.

This makes up for everything, doesn't it?

Let's resolve to keep this day sacred to perfect beauty all our lives for the gift it has given us.

It's the birthday of our happiness, said Anne softly.

I've always loved this old garden of hester gray's and now it will be dearer than ever.

But I'll have to ask you to.

Wait a long time, Anne, said Gilbert sadly.

It will be three years before I finish my medical course.

And even then there will be no diamond sunbursts and marble halls.

And laughed.

I don't want sunbursts and marble halls.

I just want you.

You see, I'm quite ASHAMELESS as Phil about it.

Sunbursts and marble halls may be all very well, but there's more scope for imagination without them.

And as for the waiting, that doesn't matter.

We'll just be happy waiting and working for each other and dreaming.

Oh, dreams will be very sweet now.

Gilbert drew her close to him and kissed her.

Then they walked home together in the dusk, crowned king and queen in the bridal realm of love, along winding paths fringed with the sweetest flowers that ever bloomed and overhaunted meadows where winds of hope and memory blew.

Thank you for joining Bite at a Time Books today while we read a.

Bite of one of your favorite classics.

Again, my name is Brie Carlyle and I hope you come back tomorrow for the first bite of Frankenstein.

Don't forget to tag us on your social media posts at byte atotimebooks and we hope to be able to feature you in this Saturday segment.

Check out the show notes or our website Bite at a Time books for the links for our show.