Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the fifth chapter of Anne's House of Dreams.
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Wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Today we'll be continuing Anne's House of Dreams by Lucy Maud Montgomery.
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Chapter Five the Homecoming Dr.
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David Blythe had sent his horse and buggy to meet them and the urchin who had brought it slipped away with a sympathetic grin, leaving them to the delight of driving alone to their new home through the radiant evening and never forgot the loveliness of the view that broke upon them when they had driven over the hill behind the village.
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Her new home could not yet be seen, but before her lay four winds harbor like a great shining mirror of rose and silver.
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Far down she saw its entrance between the bar of sand dunes on one side and a steep, high, grim red sandstone cliff on the other.
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Beyond the bar, the sea, calm and austere, dreamed in the afterlight.
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The little fishing village nestled in the COVID where the sand dunes met the harbor shore looked like a great opal in the haze.
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A sky over them was like a jeweled cup from which the dusk was pouring.
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The air was crisped with the compelling tang of the sea, and the whole landscape was infused with the subtleties of a sea evening.
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A few dim sails drifted along the darkening, fur clad harbor shores.
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A bell was ringing from the tower of a little white church on the far side.
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mellowly and dreamily sweet, the chime floated across the water, blint with the moan of the sea.
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The great revolving light on the cliff at the channel flashed warm and golden against the clear northern sky, a trembling, quivering star of good hope.
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Far out along the horizon was the crinkled gray ribbon of a passing steamer smoke.
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Oh, beautiful.
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Beautiful murmured anne I shall love for winds Gilbert where is our house?
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We can't see it yet.
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The belt of birch running up from that little cove hides it.
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It's about 2 miles from Glen St.
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Mary, and there's another mile between it and the lighthouse.
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We won't have many neighbors, Anne.
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There's only one house near us, and I don't know who lives in it.
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Shall you be lonely when I'm away?
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Not with that light and that loveliness for company.
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Who lives in that house, Gilbert?
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I don't know.
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It doesn't look exactly as if the occupants would be kindred spirits, Anne, does it?
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The house was a large, substantial affair, painted such a vivid green that the landscape seemed quite faded.
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By contrast, there was an orchard behind it and a nicely kept lawn before it.
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But somehow there was a certain barrenness about it.
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Perhaps its neatness was responsible for this.
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The whole establishment house, Barnes orchard, garden, lawn and lane was so starkly neat.
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It doesn't seem probable that anyone with that taste in paint could be very kindred, acknowledged Anne.
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Unless it were an accident like our Blue Hall.
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I feel certain there are no children there.
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At least it's even neater than the old cop place on the Tory Road, and I never expected to see anything neater than that.
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They had not met anybody on the moist red road that wound along the harbor shore.
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But just before they came to the belt of birch which hid their home, ants saw a girl who was driving a flock of snow white geese along the crest of a velvety green hill on the right.
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Great scattered furs grew along it.
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Between their trunks one saw glimpses of yellow harvest fields, gleams of golden sand hills and bits of blue sea.
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The girl was tall and wore a dress of pale blue print.
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She walked with a certain springiness of step and erectness of bearing.
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She and her geese came out of the gate at the foot of the hill.
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As Ann and Gilbert passed, she stood with her hand on the fastening of the gate and looked steadily at them with an expression it hardly attains to interest but did not descend to curiosity.
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It seemed to Anne for a fleeting moment that there was even a veiled hint of hostility in it.
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But it was the girl's beauty which made Anne give a little gasp a beauty so marked that it must have attracted attention anywhere.
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She was hatless but heavy braids of burnished hair.
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The hue of ripe wheat were twisted about her head like a coronet.
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Her eyes were blue and starlike.
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Her figure in its plain print gown was magnificent and her lips were as crimson as the bunch of bloodbred poppies she wore at her belt.
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Gilbert, who is the girl we've just passed?
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Asked Anne in a low voice.
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I didn't notice any girl, said Gilbert, who had eyes only for his bride.
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She was standing by that gate.
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No, don't look back.
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She's still watching us.
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I never saw such a beautiful face.
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I don't remember seeing any very handsome girls while I was here.
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There are some pretty girls up at the glen, but I hardly think they could be called beautiful.
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This girl is.
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You can't have seen her or you would remember her.
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Nobody could forget her.
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I never saw such a face except in pictures.
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And her hair.
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It made me think of browning's quart of gold and gorgeous snake.
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Probably she's some visitor in four winds.
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Likely someone from that big summer hotel over the harbor.
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She wore a white apron and she was driving geese.
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She might do that for amusement.
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Look, Anne.
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There's our house.
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Anne looked and forgot for a time the girl with the splendid, resentful eyes.
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The first glimpse of her new home was a delight to eye and spirit.
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It looked so like a big creamy seashell stranded on the harbor shore.
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The rows of tall Lombardi poplars down its lane stood out in stately purple silhouette against the sky.
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Behind it, sheltering its garden from the two keen breath of sea winds, was a cloudy furwood in which the winds might make all kinds of weird and haunting music.
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Like all woods, it seemed to be holding and unfolding secrets in its recesses.
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Secrets whose charm is only to be won by entering in and patiently seeking outwardly.
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Dark green arms keep them inviolate from curious or indifferent eyes.
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The night winds were beginning their wild dances beyond the bar and the fishing hamlet across the harbor was gemmed with lights.
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As Anne and Gilbert drove up the poplar lane, the door of the little house opened and a warm glow of fire light flickered out into the dusk.
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Gilbert lifted Anne from the buggy and led her into the garden.
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Through the little gate between the ruddy tipped furs up the trim red path to the sandstone step.
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Welcome home, he whispered, and hand in hand, they stepped over the threshold of their house of Dreams.
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Thank you for joining Bite at a 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's House of Dreams.
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You can check out the show notes or our website, Bite atetimebooks.com for the rest of the links for our show.
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Music.
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Take a look and look, and let's see what we can find.
