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

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So many adventures and mountains we can climb.

Take your word for word, line by line, one part at a time.

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

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 Aven Lee by Lucy Maud Montgomery, 13 a golden picnic and on her way to Orchard Slope, met Diana bound for Green Gables, just where the mossy old Log Bridge spanned the brook below the haunted wood.

And they sat down by the margin of the dryad's bubble, where tiny ferns were unrolling like curly headed green pixie folk wakening up from a nap.

I was just on my way over to invite you to help me celebrate my birthday on Saturday, said Anne.

Your birthday?

But your birthday was in March.

That wasn't my fault, laughed Anne.

If my parents had consulted me, it would never have happened.

Then I should have chosen to be born in spring.

Of course, it must be delightful to come into the world with the Mayflowers and Violets.

You would always feel that you were their foster sister.

But since I didn't, the next best thing is to celebrate my birthday in the spring.

Priscilla is coming over Saturday, and Jane will be home.

We'll all four start off to the woods and spend a golden day making the acquaintance of the spring.

None of us really know her yet, and we'll meet her back there as we never can anywhere else.

I want to explore all those fields and lonely places.

Anyhow, I have a conviction that there are scores of beautiful nooks there that have never really been seen, although they may have been looked at.

We'll make friends with wind and sky and sun and bring home the spring in our hearts.

It sounds awfully nice, said Diana, with some inward distrust of Anne's magic of words.

But won't it be very damp in some places yet?

Oh, we'll wear rubbers, was Anne's concession to practicalities.

And I want you to come over early Saturday morning and help me prepare lunch.

I'm going to have the daintiest things possible, things that will match the spring, you understand?

Little jelly tarts and ladyfingers and drop cookies frosted with pink and yellow icing and buttercup cake.

And we must have sandwiches, too, though they're not very poetical, saturday proved an ideal day for a picnic.

A day of breeze and blue, warm, sunny, with a little rollicking wind blowing across meadow and orchard over every sunlit upland and field was a delicate flower starred green.

Mr.

Harrison harrowing at the back of his farm and feeling some of the spring Witchwork even in his sober middleaged blood, saw four girls basket laden tripping across the end of his field, where it joined a fringing woodland of birch and FIR.

Their blithe voices and laughter echoed down to him.

It's so easy to be happy on a day like this, isn't it?

Anne was saying with true anish philosophy.

Let's try to make this a really golden day, girls.

A day to which we can always look back with delight.

We're to seek for beauty and refuse to see anything else.

Be gone, dull care.

Jane, you are thinking of something that went wrong in school yesterday.

How do you know?

Gasped Jane, amazed.

Oh, I know the expression.

I've felt it often enough on my own face.

But put it out of your mind.

There's a deer.

It will keep till Monday.

Or if it doesn't, so much the better.

Oh, girls, girls, see that patch of violets?

There's something for memory's.

Picture gallery.

When I'm 80 years old, if I ever am, I shall shut my eyes and see those violets just as I see them now.

That's the first good gift our day has given us.

If a kiss could be seen, I think it would look like a violet, said Priscilla.

Anne glowed.

I'm so glad you spoke that, thought, Priscilla, instead of just thinking it and keeping it to yourself.

This world would be a much more interesting place.

Although it is very interesting anyhow.

If people spoke out their real thoughts, it would be too hot to hold some folks, quoted Jane Sagely.

I suppose it might be, but that would be their own faults for thinking nasty things.

Anyhow, we can tell all our thoughts today because we're going to have nothing but beautiful thoughts.

Everybody can say just what comes into her head.

That is conversation.

Here's a little path I never saw before.

Let's explore it.

The path was a winding one, so narrow that the girls walked in single file, and even then the fur boughs brushed their faces.

Under the furs were velvety cushions of moss, and further on, where the trees were smaller and fewer, the ground was rich in a variety of green growing things.

What a lot of elephants ears.

Exclaimed Diana.

I'm going to pick a big bunch.

They're so pretty.

How did such graceful, feathery things ever come to have such a dreadful name?

Asked Priscilla.

Because the person who first named them either had no imagination at all or else far too much, said Anne.

Oh, girls, look at that.

That was a shallow woodland pool in the center of a little open glade where the path ended.

Later on in the season it would be dried up and its place filled with a rank growth of ferns.

But now it was a glimmering placid sheet, round as a saucer and clear as crystal.

A ring of slender young birches encircled it, and little ferns fringed its margin.

How sweet.

Said Jane.

Let us dance around it like wood nymphs.

Cried Anne, dropping her basket and extending her hands.

But the dance was not a success, for the ground was boggy and Jane's rubbers came off.

You can't be a wood nymph if you have to wear rubbers, was her decision.

Well, we must name this place before we leave it, said Anne, yielding to the indisputable logic of facts.

Everybody suggests a name and will draw lots.

Diana Birchpool suggested Diana promptly.

Crystal Lake, said Jane, and standing behind them, implored Priscilla with her eyes not to perpetrate another such name.

And Priscilla rose to the occasion with glimmer glass.

Anne's selection was the fairies mirror.

The names were written on strips of birch bark.

With a pencil schoolmam, Jane produced from her pocket and placed an Anne's hat.

Then Priscilla shut her eyes and drew one.

Crystal Lake.

Read Jane triumphantly.

Crystal Lake it was.

And if Anne thought that chance had played the pool a shabby trick, she did not say so.

Pushing through the undergrowth beyond, the girls came out to the young green seclusion of Mr.

Silas Sloan's back pasture.

Across it they found the entrance to a lane striking up through the woods and voted to explore it also.

It rewarded their quest with a succession of pretty surprises.

First, skirting Mr.

Sloan's pasture came an archway of wild cherry trees, all in bloom.

The girls swung their hats on their arms and wreathed their hair with the creamy fluffy blossoms.

Then the lane turned at right angles and plunged into a spruce wood so thick and dark that they walked in a gloom as of twilight with not a glimpse of sky or sunlight to be seen.

This is where the bad wood elves dwell, whispered Anne.

They are impish and malicious, but they can't harm us because they are not allowed to do evil.

In the spring, there was one peeping at us around that old twisted fur and didn't you see a group of them on that big freckly toadstool we just passed?

The good fairies always dwell in the sunshiny places.

I wish there really were fairies, said Jane.

Wouldn't it be nice to have three wishes granted you?

Or even only one?

What would you wish for, girls, if you could have a wish granted?

I'd wish to be rich and beautiful and clever.

I'd wish to be tall and slender, said Diana.

I would wish to be famous, said Priscilla.

Anne thought of her hair and then dismissed the thought as unworthy.

I wish it might be spring all the time and in everybody's heart and all our lives, she said.

But that, said Priscilla, would be just wishing the world were like heaven, only like a part of heaven.

In the other parts, there would be summer and autumn.

Yes, and a bit of winter, too.

I think I want glittery snowy fields and white frosts in heaven sometimes, don't you, Jane?

I don't know, said Jane uncomfortably.

Jane was a good girl, a member of the church who tried conscientiously to live up to her profession and believed everything she had been taught.

But she never thought about heaven any more than she could help.

For all that many may asked me the other day if we would wear our best dresses every day in heaven, laughed Diana.

And didn't you tell her we would?

Asked Anne.

Mercy, no.

I told her we wouldn't be thinking of dresses at all there.

Oh, I think we will a little, said Anne earnestly.

There'll be plenty of time and all eternity for it without neglecting more important things.

I believe we'll all wear beautiful dresses.

Or I suppose Raymond would be a more suitable way of speaking.

I shall want to wear pink for a few centuries at first.

It would take me that long to get tired of it, I feel sure.

I do love pink so, and I can never wear it in this world.

Past the spruces, the lane dipped down into a sunny little open where a log bridge spanned abroad.

And then came the glory of a sunlit beechwood, where the air was like transparent golden wine, and the leaves fresh and green, and the wood floor a mosaic of tremulous sunshine.

Then more wild cherries and a little valley of lysum FIRs.

And then a hill so steep that the girl lost their breath climbing it.

But when they reached the top and came out into the open, the prettiest surprise of all awaited them.

Beyond were the back fields of the farms that ran out to the upper Carmody road just before them, hemmed in by beaches and furs, but open to the south with a little corner, and in it a garden, or what had once been a garden.

A tumble down stone d*** overgrown with mosses and grass surrounded it.

Along the eastern side ran a row of garden cherry trees.

Why does a snowdrift?

There were traces of old paths still, and a double line of rose bushes through the middle.

But all the rest of the space was a sheet of yellow and white narcissi in their earliest, most lavish windsplayed bloom above the lush green grasses.

Oh, how perfectly lovely.

Three of the girls cried.

Anne only gazed in eloquent silence.

How in the world does it happen that there ever was a garden back here?

Said Priscilla in amazement.

It must be Hester gray's garden, said Diana.

I've heard mother speak of it, but I never saw it before.

And I wouldn't have supposed that it could be in existence still.

You've heard the story.

Anne no, but the name seems familiar to me.

Oh, you've seen it in the graveyard.

She's buried down there in the poplar corner.

You know, the little brown stone with the opening gates carved on it and sacred to the memory of Hester Gray, aged 22.

Jordan Gray is buried right beside her, but there's no stone to him.

It's a wonder Marilla never told you about it, Anne.

To be sure, it happened 30 years ago, and everybody has forgotten.

Well, if there's a story, we must have it, said.

Anne.

Let's sit right down here among the narcissi, and Diana will tell it like girls.

There are hundreds of them.

They've spread over everything.

It looks as if the garden were carpeted with moonshine and sunshine combined.

This is a discovery worth making.

To think that I've lived within a mile of this place for six years and I've never seen it before.

Now.

Diana long ago began.

Diana.

This farm belonged to old Mr.

David Gray.

He didn't live on it.

He lived where Silas Sloan lives now.

He had one son, Jordan, and he went up to Boston one winter to work.

And while he was there, he fell in love with a girl named Hester Murray.

She was working in a store, and she hated it.

She had been brought up in the country, and she always wanted to get back.

When Jordan asked her to marry him, she said she would if he'd take her away to some quiet spot where she'd see nothing but fields and trees.

So he brought her to Avonlea.

Mrs.

Lynn says he was taking a fearful risk in marrying a Yankee.

And it's certain that hester was very delicate and a very poor housekeeper.

But Mother says she was very pretty and sweet.

And Jordan just worshiped the ground she walked on.

While Mr.

Grey gave Jordan this farm and he built a little house back here, and Jordan and Hester lived in it for four years.

She never went out much, and hardly anybody went to see her except Mother and Mrs.

Lynde.

Jordan made her this garden, and she was crazy about it and spent most of her time in it.

She wasn't much of a housekeeper, but she had a knack with flowers, and then she got sick.

Mother says she thinks she was in consumption before she ever came here.

She never really laid up, but just grew weaker and weaker all the time.

Jordan wouldn't have anybody to wait on her.

He did it all himself.

And Mother says he was as tender and gentle as a woman.

Every day, he'd wrap her in a shawl and carry her out to the garden.

And she lied there on a bench, quite happy.

They say she used to make Jordan kneel down by her every night and morning and pray with her that she might die out in the garden when the time came and her prayer was answered.

One day, Jordan carried her out to the bench, and then he picked all the roses that were out and heaped them over her.

And she just smiled up at him and closed her eyes.

And that, concluded Diana softly, was the end.

Oh, what a dear story, sighed Anne, wiping away her tears.

What became of Jordan?

Asked Priscilla.

He sold the farm after hester died and went back to Boston.

Mr.

JBA.

Sloane bought the farm and hauled the little house out to the road.

Jordan died about ten years after, and he was brought home and buried beside Hester.

I can't understand how she could have wanted to live back here, away from everything, said Jane.

Oh, I can easily understand that, said Anne thoughtfully.

I wouldn't want it myself for a steady thing, because although I love the fields and woods, I love people, too, but I can understand it.

In Hester, she was tired to death of the noise of the big city and the crowds of people always coming and going and caring nothing for her.

She just wanted to escape from it all to some still, green, friendly place where she could rest, and she got just what she wanted, which is something very few people do.

I believe she had four beautiful years before she died, four years of perfect happiness.

So I think she was to be envied more than pitied, and then to shut your eyes and fall asleep among the roses with the one you loved best on earth smiling down at you.

Oh, I think it was beautiful.

She set out those cherry trees over there, said Diana.

She told mother she'd never lived to eat their fruit, but she wanted to think that something she had planted would go on living and helping to make the world beautiful after she was dead.

I'm so glad we came this way, said Anne, the shining eyed.

This is my adopted birthday, you know, and this garden and its story is the birthday gift it has given me.

Did your mother ever tell you what Hester Gray looked like, Diana?

No, only just that she was pretty.

I'm rather glad of that, because I can imagine what she looked like without being hampered by facts.

I think she was very slight and small, with softly curling dark hair and big, sweet, timid brown eyes and a little wistful, pale face.

The girls left their baskets in Hester's garden and spent the rest of the afternoon rambling in the woods and fields surrounding it, discovering many pretty nooks and lanes.

When they got hungry, they had lunch in the prettiest spot of all on the steep bank of a gurgling brook, where white birches shot up out of long, feathery grasses.

The girl sat down by the roots and did full justice to Anne, stainties even the unpoetical sandwiches being greatly appreciated by hearty unspoiled appetites sharpened by all the fresh air and exercise they had enjoyed.

Anne had brought glasses and lemonade for her guests, but for her own part drank cold brook water from a cup fashioned out of birch bark.

The cup leaked and the water tasted of earth as brookwater is apt to do in spring, but Anne thought it more appropriate to the occasion than lemonade.

Look.

Do you see that poem?

She said suddenly pointing where Jane and Diana stared, as if expecting to see runic rhymes on the birch trees.

There down in the brook, that old green mossy log with the water flowing over it, in those smooth ripples that look as if they'd been combed, and that single shaft of sunshine falling right atward it far down into the pool.

Oh, it's the most beautiful poem I ever saw.

I should rather call it a picture, said Jane.

A poem is lines and verses.

Oh, dear me, no.

Anne shook her head with its fluffy wild cherry coronal.

Positively, the lines and verses are only the outward garments of the poem and are no more really it than your ruffles and flounces, are you, Jane?

The real poem is the soul within them, and that beautiful bit is the soul of an unwritten poem.

It is not every day one sees a soul, even of a poem.

I wonder what a soul, a person's soul, would look like, said Priscilla.

Dreamily like that, I should think, answered Anne, pointing to a radiance of sifted sunlight streaming through a birch tree, only with shape and features, of course.

I like to fancy soles as being made of light, and some are all shot through with rosy stains and quivers.

And some have a soft, glitterlike moonlight on the sea, and some are pale and transparent like missed at dawn.

I read somewhere once that souls were like flowers, said Priscilla.

Then your soul is a golden narcissus, said Anne.

And Diana's is like a red, red rose.

James is an apple blossom, pink and wholesome and sweet, and your own is a white violet with purple streaks in its heart, finished Priscilla.

Jane whispered to Diana that she really could not understand what they were talking about, could she?

The girls went home by the light of a calm golden sunset, their baskets filled with narcissus blossoms from Hester's garden, some of which Anne carried to the cemetery next day and laid upon Hester s grave.

Minstrel robins were whistling in the FIRs, and the frogs were singing in the marshes.

All the basins among the hills were brimmed with topaz and emerald light.

Well, we have had a lovely time after all, said Diana, as if she had hardly expected to have it when she set out.

It has been a truly golden day, said Priscilla.

I'm really awfully fond of the woods myself, said Jane, and said nothing.

She was looking afar into the western sky and thinking of little Hester Gray.

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 of Avonlea.

So many adventures and mountains we can climb.