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

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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.

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 20 the way it often happens, Anne Rose Betheimes the next morning and blithely greeted the fresh day when the banners of the sunrise were shaken triumphantly across the pearly skies.

Green gables lay in a pool of sunshine flecked with the dancing shadows of poplar and willow.

Beyond the land was Mr.

Harrison's Wheatfield.

A great wind rippled expanse of pale gold.

The world was so beautiful that Anne spent ten blissful minutes hanging idly over the garden gate, drinking the loveliness in.

After breakfast, Marilla made ready for her journey.

Dora was to go with her, having been long promised the treat.

Now, Davey, you try to be a good boy and don't bother Anne.

She straightly charged him.

If you are good, I'll bring you a striped candy cane from town for alas.

Marilla had stooped to the evil habit of bribing people to be good.

I won't be bad on purpose, but suppose and I'm bad accidentally, davy wanted to know.

You'll have to guard against accidents, admonished Marilla.

And if Mr.

Shearer comes today, get a nice roast and some steak.

If he doesn't, you'll have to kill a fowl for dinner tomorrow.

And nodded.

I'm not going to bother cooking any dinner for just Davy and myself today, she said.

That cold hambone will do for noon lunch, and I'll have some steak fried for you when you come home at night.

I'm going to help Mr.

Harrison haul dolce this morning, announced Davey.

He asked me, too, and I guess he'll ask me to dinner, too.

Mr.

Harrison is an awful kind man.

He's a real sociable man.

I hope I'll be like him when I grow up.

I mean behave like him.

I don't want to look like him, but I guess there's no danger, for Mrs.

Lynn says I'm a very handsome child.

Do you suppose it'll last, Anne?

I want to know.

I dare say it will, said Anne gravely.

You are a handsome boy, Davy.

Marilla looked volumes of disapproval.

But you must live up to it and be just as nice and gentlemanly as you look to be.

And you told Minnie May Berry the other day when you found her crying because someone said she was ugly, that if she was nice and kind and loving, people wouldn't mind her looks, said Davy discontentedly.

Seems to me you can't get out of being good in this world for some reason or another.

You just have to behave.

Don't you want to be good?

Asked Marilla, who had learned a great deal but had not yet learned the futility of asking such questions.

Yes, I want to be good, but not too good, said Davy cautiously.

You don't have to be very good to be a Sunday school superintendent, Mr.

Bell's.

That, and he's a real bad man.

Indeed he's not, said Marilla indignantly.

He is.

He says he is.

Himself, surveyed Davy.

He said it when he prayed in Sunday school last Sunday.

He said he was a vile worm and a miserable sinner and guilty of the blackest niquity.

What did he do that was so bad, Marilla?

Did he kill anybody or steal the collection?

Since I want to know.

Fortunately, Mrs.

Lynde came driving up the lane at that moment, and Marilla made off feeling that she had escaped from the snare of the fowler and wished devoutly that Mr.

Bell were not quite so highly figurative in his public petitions, especially in the hearing of small boys who were always wanting to know.

Anne, left alone in her glory, worked with a will.

The floor was swept, the beds made, the hens fed, the muslin dress washed and hung out on the line.

Then Anne prepared for the transfer of feathers she mounted to the garret and donned the first old dress that came to hand, a navy blue cashmere she had worn at 14.

It was decidedly on the short side and as skimpy as the notable winsie anne had worn upon the occasion of her debut at Green Gables.

But at least it would not be materially injured by down and feathers.

And completed her toilet by tying a big red and white spotted handkerchief that had belonged to Matthew over her head and thus accoutured betook herself to the kitchen chamber with her.

Marilla, before her departure, had helped her carry the feather bed.

A cracked mirror hung by the chamber window, and in an unlucky moment, Anne looked into it.

There were those seven freckles on her nose, more rampant than ever, or so it seemed in the glare of light from the unshaded window.

Oh, I forgot to rub that lotion on last night, she thought.

I'd better run down to the pantry and do it now.

Anne had already suffered many things trying to remove those freckles.

On one occasion, the entire skin had peeled off her nose, but the freckles remained.

A few days previously.

She had found a recipe for a freckle lotion in a magazine.

And as the ingredients were within her reach.

She straight away compounded it much to the disgust of Marilla who thought that if providence had placed freckles on your nose it was your bound in duty to leave them there and scurried down to the pantry which.

Always dim from the big willow growing close to the window was now almost dark.

By reason of the shade drawn to exclude flies Anne caught the bottle containing delosion from the shelf and copiously anointed her nose therewith by means of a little sponge sacred to the purpose.

This important duty done, she returned to her work.

Anyone who has ever shifted feathers from one tick to another will not need to be told that when Anne finished, she was a sight to behold.

Her dress was white with down and fluff and her front hair escaping from under her handkerchief was adorned with a veritable halo of feathers.

At this auspicious moment, a knock sounded at the kitchen door.

That must be Mr.

Shearer thought.

Anne I'm in a dreadful mess, but I'll have to run down as I am, for he's always in a hurry.

Down flew Anne to the kitchen door.

If ever a charitable floor did open to swallow up a miserable, befeathered damsel the green gable's porch floor should promptly have engulfed Anne.

At that moment, on the doorstep was standing Priscilla Grant golden and fair in silk attire a short, stout, greyhaired lady in a tweed suit and another lady tall, stately, wonderfully gowned with a beautiful, highbred face and large, black lashed violet eyes whom Anne instinctively felt, as she would have said in her earlier days to be Mrs.

Charlotte E.

Morgan.

In the dismay of the moment one thought stood out from the confusion of Anne's mind and she grasped at it as a proverbial straw.

All Mrs.

Morgan's heroines were noted for rising to the occasion.

No matter what their troubles were, they invariably rose to the occasion and showed their superiority over all ills of time, space and quantity and therefore felt it was her duty to rise to the occasion.

And she did it so perfectly that Priscilla afterward declared she never admired Anne surely more than at that moment.

No matter what her outraged feelings were, she did not show them.

She greeted Priscilla and was introduced to her companions as calmly and composedly as if she had been arrayed in purple and fine linen.

To be sure, it was somewhat of a shock to find that the lady she had instinctively felt to be Mrs.

Morgan was not Mrs.

Morgan at all but an unknown Mrs.

Pindaxter while the stout little gray haired woman was Mrs.

Morgan.

But in the greater shock, the lesser lost its power.

Anne ushered her guests to the spare room and thence into the parlour where she left them while she hastened out to help Priscilla unharness her horse.

It's dreadful to come upon you so unexpectedly as this, apologized Priscilla.

But I did not know till last night that we were coming.

Aunt Charlotte is going away Monday, and she had promised to spend today with a friend in town.

But last night her friend telephoned to her not to come because they were quarantined for scarlet fever.

So I suggested we come here instead, for I knew you were longing to see her.

We called at the White Sands Hotel and brought Mrs Pindexter with us.

She is a friend of Aunts and lives in New York, and her husband is a millionaire.

We can't stay very long, for Mrs.

Pin.

Dexter has to be back at the hotel by 05:00.

Several times when they were putting away the horse and caught Priscilla looking at her in a furtive, puzzled way.

She needn't stare at me so, Anne thought a little resentfully.

If she doesn't know what it is to change a feather bed, she might imagine it.

When Priscilla had gone to the parlor, and before Anne could escape upstairs, diana walked into the kitchen.

Anne caught her astonished friend by the arm.

Diana Barry.

Who do you suppose is in the parlor at this very moment?

Mrs.

Charlotte E.

Morgan and a New York millionaire's wife.

And here I am, like this, and not a thing in the house for dinner but a cold hambone.

Diana.

By this time, Anne had become aware that Diana was staring at her in precisely the same bewildered fashion as Priscilla had done.

It was really too much.

Oh, Diana, don't look at me so, she implored.

You, at least, must know that the neatest person in the world couldn't empty feathers from one ticket to another and remain neat in the process.

It isn't the feathers, hesitated Diana.

It's your nose.

Anne.

My nose?

Oh, Diana, surely nothing has gone wrong with it.

Anne rushed to the little looking glass over the sink.

One glance revealed the fatal truth.

Her nose was a brilliant scarlet.

Anne sat down on the sofa, her dauntless spirit subdued at last.

What is the matter with it?

Asked Diana curiosity overcoming delicacy.

I thought I was rubbing my freckle lotion on it, but I must have used that red dye Marilla has for making the pattern on her rugs, was the despairing response.

What shall I do?

Wash it off, said Diana, practically.

Perhaps it won't wash off.

First I dye my hair, then I dye my nose.

Marilla cut my hair off when I dyed it, but that remedy would hardly be practicable in this case.

Oh, this is another punishment for vanity, and I suppose I deserve it, though there's not much comfort in that.

It is really almost enough to make one believe in ill luck, though Mrs.

Lynn says there's no such thing because everything is foreordained.

Fortunately, the dye washed off easily, and Anne, somewhat consoled, betook herself to the East Gable while Diana ran home.

Presently Anne came down again, clothed, and in her right mind.

The muslin dress she had fondly hoped to wear was bobbing merrily about on the line outside so she was forced to contend herself with her black lawn.

She had the fire on and the tea steeping when Diana returned.

The latter wore her muslin at least, and carried a covered platter in her hand.

Mother sent you this, she said, lifting the cover and displaying a nicely carved and jointed chicken to Anne's grateful eyes.

The chicken was supplemented by light new bread, excellent butter and cheese, Marilla's fruit cake, and a dish of preserved plums floating in their golden syrup as in congealed summer sunshine.

There was a big bowl full of pink and white asters, also by way of decoration, yet the spread seemed very meager beside the elaborate one formerly prepared for Mrs.

Morgan.

Anne's hungry guests, however, did not seem to think anything was lacking, and they ate the simple Vians with apparent enjoyment.

But after the first few moments, anne thought no more of what was or was not on her bill affair.

Mrs.

Morgan's appearance might be somewhat disappointing, as even her loyal worshippers had been forced to admit to each other, but she proved to be a delightful conversationalist.

She had traveled extensively and was an excellent storyteller.

She had seen much of men and women and crystallized her experiences into witty little sentences and epigrams which made her hearers feel as if they were listening to one of the people in clever books.

But under all her sparkle, there was a strongly felt undercurrent of true womanly sympathy and kindheartedness, which won affection as easily as her brilliancy won admiration.

Nor did she monopolize the conversation.

She could draw others out as skilfully and fully as she could talk herself, and Anne and Diana found themselves chattering freely to her.

Mrs.

Pindexter said little.

She merely smiled with her lovely eyes and lips and ate chicken and fruitcake and preserves with such exquisite grace that she conveyed the impression of dining on ambrosia and honeydew.

But then, as Anne said to Diana later on, anybody so divinely beautiful as Mrs.

Pindexter didn't need to talk.

It was enough for her just to look.

After dinner, they all had a walk through Lovers Lane and Violet Veil and the Birch Path, then back through the haunted wood to the dryads bubble where they sat down and talked for a delightful last half hour.

Mrs.

Morgan wanted to know how the haunted wood came by its name and laughed until she cried when she heard the story and Anne's dramatic account of a certain memorable walks through it at the witching hour of twilight.

It has indeed been a feast of reason and flow of soul, hasn't it?

Said Anne, when her guests had gone and she and Diana were alone again.

I don't know which I enjoyed more, listening to Mrs.

Morgan or gazing at Mrs.

Pindaxter.

I believe we had a nicer time than if we'd known they were coming and been cumbered with much serving.

You must stay to tea with me, Diana, and we'll talk.

It all over, Priscilla says.

Mrs.

Pindexer's husband's sister is married to an English earl.

And yet she took a second helping of the plum reserves, said Diana, as if the two facts were somehow incompatible.

I dare say even the English earl himself wouldn't have turned up his aristocratic nose at Marilla's plum preserves, said Anne proudly.

Anne did not mention the misfortune which had befallen her nose when she related the day's history to Marilla that evening, but she took the bottle of Freckle lotion and emptied it out of the window.

I shall never try any beautifying messes again, she said, darkly resolute.

They may do for careful, deliberate people, but for anyone so hopelessly given over to making mistakes as I seem to be, it's tempting fate to meddle with them.

Thank you for joining Bite at a Time Books today while we read a bite of one of your favorite classics.

If you enjoy our show, be sure to follow us so you get all the new episodes.

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We would also love for you to drop us a rating on your favorite podcast platform and share a show with your friends.

You can catch us on all the social medias at Byte at a Time Books again, my name is Brie Carlyle, and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of Anne of Avonlea.