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

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Take a look at let's see what we can find take it chapter by chapter one by so many adventures and mountains we can climb take your word for wordline, 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.

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Today we'll be continuing anne of the island by Lucy Maud Montgomery chapter Nine an unwelcome lover and a welcome friend.

The second term at Redmond sped as quickly as had the first actually whizzed away, Philippa said.

Anne enjoyed it thoroughly in all its phases the stimulating class rivalry, the making and deepening of new and helpful friendships, the gay little social stunts, the doings of the various societies of which she was a member, the widening of horizons and interests she studied hard, for she had made up her mind to win the Thorburn scholarship in English.

This being one meant that she could come back to Redmond the next year without trenching on Marilla's small savings, something Anne was determined she would not do.

Gilbert, too, was in full chase after a scholarship, but found plenty of time for frequent calls at 38 St.

John's.

He was Anne's escort at nearly all the college affairs, and she knew that their names were coupled in Redmond gossip.

Anne raged over this, but was helpless.

She could not cast an old friend like Gilbert aside, especially when he had grown suddenly wise and wary, as behooved him in the dangerous proximity of more than one Redmond youth, who would gladly have taken his place by the side of the slender redhaired coed, whose gray eyes were as alluring as stars of evening.

Anne was never attended by the crowd of willing victims who hovered around Philippa's conquering March through her freshman year, but there was a lanky brainy freshy, a jolly little round sophomore, and a tall, learned junior who all liked to call at 38 St.

John's and talk over Ologies and Isms, as well as lighter subjects with Anne.

In the becushened parlour of that dumasill.

Gilbert did not love any of them, and he was exceedingly careful to give none of them the advantage over him by any untimely display of his real feelings.

And word to her, he had become again the boy comrade of Avonlea days, and as such could hold his own against any smitten smene who had so far entered the lists against him as a companion.

Anne honestly acknowledged nobody could be so satisfactory as Gilbert.

She was very glad, so she told herself that he had evidently dropped all nonsensical ideas, though she spent considerable time secretly wondering why only one disagreeable incident marred that winter.

Charlie Sloan, sitting bolt upright on Miss Ada's most dearly beloved cushion, asked Anne one night if she would promise to become Mrs.

Charlie Sloan someday, coming after Billy Andrews proxy effort.

This was not quite the shock to Anne's romantic sensibilities that it would otherwise have been, but it was certainly another heart rending disillusion.

She was angry too, for she felt that she had never given Charlie the slightest encouragement to suppose such a thing possible.

But what could you expect of a Sloan as Mrs.

Rachel Lynde would ask, scornfully charlie's whole attitude tone, air, words fairly wreaked with flownishness.

He was conferring a great honor, no doubt whatever about that?

And when Anne, utterly insensible to the honor, refused him as delicately and considerately as she could for even a Sloan had feelings which ought not to be unduly lacerated.

Sloanishness still further betrayed itself.

Charlie certainly did not take his dismissal as Anne's imaginary rejected suitors did.

Instead, he became angry and showed it.

He said two or three quite nasty things.

Anne's temper flashed up mutinously as she retorted with a cutting little speech whose keenness pierced even Charlie's protective slownishness and reached the quick.

He caught up his hat and flung himself out of the house with a very red face.

Anne rushed upstairs, falling twice over Miss Ada's cushions on the way, and threw herself on the bed in tears of humiliation and rage.

Had she actually stooped to quarrel with a Sloan?

Was it possible anything Charlie Sloan could say had power to make her angry?

Oh, this was degradation indeed.

Worse even than being the rival of Nettie blew it.

I wish I need never see the horrible creature again.

She sobbed vindictively into her pillows.

She could not avoid seeing him again, but the outraged Charlie took that it should not be at very close quarters.

Ms.

Ada's cushions were henceforth safe from his depredations, and when he met Anne on the street or in Redmond's halls, his bow was icy.

In the extreme, relations between these two old schoolmates continued to be thus strained for nearly a year.

Then Charlie transferred his blighted affections to a round, rosy, snubnosed, blueeyed little sophomore who appreciated them as they deserved.

Whereupon he forgave Anne and condescended to be civil to her again in a patronizing manner intended to show her just what she had lost.

One day Anne scurried excitedly into Priscilla's room.

Read that.

She cried, tossing Priscilla a letter.

It's from Stella, and she's coming to Redmond next year.

And what do you think of her idea?

I think it a perfectly splendid one, if we can only carry it out.

Do you suppose we can, priss?

I'll be better able to tell you when I find out what it is, said Priscilla, casting aside a Greek lexicon and taking up Stella's letter.

Stella Maynard had been one of their chums at Queen's Academy and had been teaching school ever since.

But I'm going to give it up and dear, she wrote, and go to college next year as I took the third at Queens.

I can enter the sophomore year.

I'm tired of teaching in a backcountry school.

Someday I'm going to write a treatise on the trials of a country school marm.

It will be a harrowing bit of realism.

It seems to be the prevailing impression that we live in clover and have nothing to do but draw our quarter salary.

My treaty shall tell the truth about us.

Why a week should pass without someone telling me that I'm doing easy work for big pay.

I would conclude that I might as well order my ascension robe immediately.

And oned well, you get your money easy, some rate pair will tell me condescendingly.

All you have to do is sit there and hear lessons.

I used to argue the matter at first, but I'm wiser now.

Facts are stubborn things, but as someone has wisely said, not half so stubborn as fallacies.

That's why I only smile loftily now in eloquent silence.

Why, I have nine grades in my school, and I have to teach a little of everything from investigating the interiors of Earthworms to the study of the solar system.

My youngest pupil is four.

His mother sends him to school to get him out of the way, and my oldest is 20.

It suddenly struck him that it would be easier to go to school and get an education than follow the plow any longer.

In the wild effort to cram all sorts of research into 6 hours a day, I don't wonder if the children feel like the little boy who was taken to see the biograph.

I have to look for what's coming next before I know what went last, he complained.

I feel like that myself.

And the letters I get.

Anne, Tommy's mother writes me that Tommy is not coming on an arithmetic as fast as she would like.

He is only in simple reduction yet.

And Johnny Johnson is in fractions.

And Johnny isn't half as smart as her Tommy, and she can't understand it.

And Susie's father wants to know why Susie can't write a letter without misspelling half the words.

And D***'s aunt wants me to change his seat because that bad brown boy he's sitting with is teaching him to say naughty words as to the financial part.

But I'll not begin on that.

Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make country schoolmarms.

There, I feel better now after that growl.

After all I've enjoyed these past two years.

But I'm coming to redmond.

And now, Anne, I have a little plan.

You know I loathe boarding.

I've boarded for four years, and I'm so tired of it I don't feel like enduring three more years of it now, why can't you and Priscilla and I club together, rent a little house somewhere in Kingsport and board ourselves?

It would be cheaper than any other way of course.

We would have to have a housekeeper and I have one ready on the spot you've heard me speak of Aunt James Cena she's the sweetest aunt that ever lived in spite of her name.

She can't help that she was called James Cena because her father.

Whose name was James.

Was drowned at sea a month before she was born I always call her Aunt Jim Z well.

Her only daughter has recently married and gone to the foreign mission field aunt Jamesina is left alone in a great big house and she's horribly lonesome she will come to Kingsport and keep house for us if we want her and I know you'll both love her the more I think of the plan.

The more I like it we could have such good.

Independent times now.

If you and Priscilla agree to it.

Wouldn't it be a good idea for you who are on the spot to look around and see if you can find a suitable house this spring?

That would be better than leaving it till the fall?

If you could get a furnished one, so much the better but if not, we can scare up a few sticks of furniture between us and old family friends with attics.

Anyhow, decide as soon as you can and write me so that Aunt James will know what plans to make for next year I think it's a good idea, said Priscilla so do I, agreed Anne?

Delightedly of course we have a nice boarding house here but when all said and done.

A boarding house isn't home so let's go house hunting at once before exams come on I'm afraid it will be hard enough to get a really suitable house.

Warned Priscilla don't expect too much.

Anne nice houses and nice localities will probably be away beyond our means we'll likely have to content ourselves with a shabby little place on some street where on live people whom to know is to be unknown and make life inside compensate for the outside accordingly.

They went house hunting but to find just what they wanted proved even harder than Priscilla had feared houses there were galore.

Furnished and unfurnished but one was too big.

Another too small this one too expensive that one too far from redmond.

Exams were on and over the last week of the term came and still their house of dreams.

As Anne called it.

Remained a castle in the air we shall have to give up and wait till the fall.

I suppose.

Said Priscilla wearily as they rambled through the park on one of April's darling days of breeze and blue when the harbor was creaming and shimmering beneath the pearl hued mists floating over it.

We may find some shack to shelter us then.

And if not boarding houses, we shall have always with us.

I'm not going to worry about it just now anyway and spoil this lovely afternoon, said Anne, gazing around her with delight.

The fresh chill air was faintly charged with the aroma of pine balsam and the sky above was crystal clear and blue a great inverted cup of blessing.

Spring is singing in my blood today and the lure of April is abroad on the air I'm seeing visions and dreaming dreams.

Priss, that's because the wind is from the west.

I do love the west wind.

It sings of hope and gladness, doesn't it?

When the east wind blows, I always think of sorrowful rain on the eaves and sad waves on a grey shore.

When I get old, I shall have rheumatism when the wind is east.

And isn't it jolly when you discard furs and winter garments for the first time in Sally force like this in spring attire?

Laughed Priscilla.

Don't you feel as if you had been made over new?

Everything is new in the spring, said Anne.

Springs themselves are always so new, too.

No spring is ever just like any other spring.

It always has something of its own to be its own peculiar sweetness.

See how green the grass is around that little pond and how the willow buds are bursting and exams are over and gone.

The time of convocation will come soon next Wednesday, this day next week we'll be home.

I'm glad said Anne dreamily.

There are so many things I want to do.

I want to sit on the back porch steps and feel the breeze blowing down over Mr.

Harrison's fields.

I want to hunt Ferds in the haunted wood and gather violets in violet veil.

Do you remember the day of our golden picnic, Priscilla?

I want to hear the frogs singing and the poplars whispering.

But I've learned to love kingsport, too.

And I'm glad I'm coming back next fall.

If I hadn't won the thorbourne, I don't believe I could have.

I couldn't take any of Marilla's little horde.

If we could only find a house, sighed Priscilla.

Look over there at kingsport.

Anne.

Houses, houses everywhere, and not one for us.

Stop it, Prince.

The best is yet to be like the old Roman will find a house or build one on a day like this.

There's no such word as fail in my bright lexicon.

They lingered in the park until sunset, living in the amazing miracle and glory and wonder of the springtide.

And they went home as usual by way of Spafford Avenue that they might have the delight of looking at Patty's place.

I feel as if something mysterious were going to happen right away.

By the pricking of my thumbs, said Anne as they went up the slope.

It's a nice storybookish feeling.

Why, Priscilla Grant, look over there and tell me if it's true.

Or am I seeing things priscilla looked.

Anne's thumbs and eyes had not deceived her over the arched gateway of Patty's Place.

Dangled a little modest sign, it said to let furnished inquire within.

Priscilla, said Anne in a whisper.

Do you suppose it's possible that we could rent Patty's place?

No, I don't.

Averred Priscilla.

It would be too good to be true.

Fairy tales don't happen nowadays.

I won't hope, Anne the disappointment would be too awful to bear.

They're sure to want more for it than we can afford.

Remember.

It's on Spaford Avenue.

We must find out anyhow, said Anne resolutely.

It's too late to call this evening, but we'll come tomorrow.

Oh, Chris, if we can get this darling spot.

I've always felt that my fortunes were linked with Patty's Place ever since I saw it first.

Thank you for joining Byte at the Time Books today while we read a byte 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 the island.