Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the second chapter of Rilla of Ingleside.

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Wherever you listen to podcasts today, we'll be continuing rilla of Ingleside by Lucy Maud Montgomery chapter Two Due of Morning outside, the Ingleside lawn was full of golden pools of sunshine and plots of alluring shadows.

Rilablithe was swinging in the hammock under the big Scotch pine, gertrude Oliver sat at its roots beside her, and Walter was stretched at full length on the grass, lost in a romance of chivalry, wherein old heroes and beauties of dead and gone centuries lived vividly again for him.

Rilla was the baby of the Blithe family and was in a chronic state of secret indignation because nobody believed she was grown up.

She was so nearly 15 that she called herself that, and she was quite as tall as Die and NAN.

Also, she was nearly as pretty as Susan believed her to be.

She had great dreamy hazel eyes, a milky skin dappled with little golden freckles and delicately arched eyebrows, giving her a demurer, questioning look which made people, especially lads and their teens, want to answer it.

Her hair was ripely, rudderly brown, and a little dent in her upper lip looked as if some good fairy had pressed it in with her finger at Rilla's christening.

Rilla, whose best friends could not deny her share of vanity, thought her face would do very well, but worried over her figure and wished her mother would be prevailed upon to let her wear longer dresses.

She, who had been so plump and rolly Polly in the old Rainbow Valley days, was incredibly slim now in the arms and legs, period.

JeM and Shirley harrowed her soul by calling her Spider, yet she somehow escaped awkwardness.

There was something in her movements that made you think she never walked but always danced.

She had been much petted and was a wee bit spoiled, but still, the general opinion was that Rila Blithe was a very sweet girl, even if she were not so clever as NAN and Die.

Miss Oliver, who was going home that night for vacation, had boarded for a year at Ingleside.

The Blithes had taken her to please Rilla, who was fathom's, deep in love with her teacher, and was even willing to share her room since no other was available.

Gertrude Oliver was 28, and life had been a struggle for her.

She was a striking looking girl with rather sad almondshaped brown eyes, a clever, rather mocking mouth, and enormous masses of black hair twisted about her head.

She was not pretty, but there was a certain charm of interest and mystery in her face, and Rilla found her fascinating.

Even her occasional moods of gloom and cynicism had allurement for Rilla.

These moods came only when Miss Oliver was tired.

At all other times she was a stimulating companion, and the gay set at Ingleside never remembered that she was so much older than themselves.

Walter and Rilla were her favorites, and she was a confidant of the secret wishes and aspirations of both.

She knew that Rilla longed to be out, to go to parties, as NAN and Die did, and to have dainty evening dresses, and yes, there's no mincing manners bows in the plural at that.

As for Walter, Miss Oliver knew that he had written a sequence of sonnets to Rosamond I e.

Faith Meredith, and that he aimed at a professorship of English literature in some big college.

She knew his passionate love of beauty and his equally passionate hatred of ugliness.

She knew his strength and his weakness.

Walter was, as ever, the handsomest of the Ingleside boys.

Miss Oliver found pleasure in looking at him for his good looks.

He was so exactly like what she would have liked her own son to be glossy black hair, brilliant dark gray eyes, faultless features, and a poet to his fingertips.

That sonnet sequence was really a remarkable thing for a lad of 20 to write.

Miss Oliver was no partial critic, and she knew that Walter Blythe had a wonderful gift.

Marilla loved Walter with all her heart.

He never teased her as Jim and Shirley did.

He never called her Spider.

His pet name for her was Rilla Myrilla.

A little pun on her real name, Marilla.

She had been named after Aunt Marilla of Green Gables, but Aunt Marilla had died before Rilla was old enough to know her very well, and Marilla detested the name as being horribly old fashioned and prim.

Why couldn't they have called her by her first name, Bertha, which was beautiful and dignified, instead of that silly Rilla?

She did not mind Walter's version, but nobody else was allowed to call her that except Miss Oliver now and then rilla Myrilla and Walter's musical voice sounded very beautiful to her, like the lilt and ripple of some silvery brook.

She would have died for Walter if it would have done him any good.

So she told Miss Oliver.

Marla was as fond of italics as most girls of 15 are, and the bitterest drop in her cup was her suspicion that he told Die more of his secrets than he told her.

He thinks I'm not grown up enough to understand, she had once lamented rebelliously to Miss Oliver.

But I am, and I would never tell them to a single soul, not even to you, Miss Oliver.

I tell you all my own.

I just couldn't be happy if I had any secret from you, dearest.

But I would never betray his.

I tell him everything.

I even show him my diary.

And it hurts me dreadfully when he doesn't tell me things.

He shows me all his poems, though they are marvellous, miss Oliver.

Oh, I just live in the hope that someday I shall be to Walter what Wordsworth's Sister's Dorothy was to him.

Wordsworth never wrote anything like Walter's poems, nor Tennyson either, I wouldn't say.

Just that both of them wrote a good deal of trash, said Miss Oliver drily.

Then repenting as she saw a hurt look in Rilla's eyes, she added hastily, but I believe Walter will be a great poet too, someday.

And you will have more of his confidence as you grow older.

When Walter was in the hospital with Typhoid last year, I was almost crazy, sighed Rilla a little importantly.

They never told me how ill he really was until it was all over.

Father wouldn't let them.

I'm glad I didn't know.

I couldn't have borne it.

I cried myself to sleep every night as it was.

But sometimes, concluded Rilla bitterly.

She likes to speak bitterly now and then.

An imitation of Miss Oliver.

Sometimes I think Walter cares more for Dog Monday than he does for me.

Dog Monday was the Ingleside dog, so called because he had come into the family on a Monday when Walter had been reading Robinson Crusoe.

He really belonged to JeM, but was much attached to Walter also.

He was lying beside Walter now with nose snuggled against his arm, thumping his tail rapturously whenever Walter gave him an absent pat.

Monday was not a collie or a setter or a hound or a Newfoundland.

He was, just, as JeM said, plain dog.

Very plain dog.

Uncharitable, people added.

Certainly Monday's looks were not his strong point.

Black spots were scattered at random over his yellow carcass, one of them apparently blotting out an eye.

His ears were in tatters, for Monday was never successful in affairs of honour.

But he possessed one talisman.

He knew that not all dogs could be handsome or eloquent or victorious, but that every dog could love inside his homely hide beat the most affectionate, loyal, faithful heart of any dog since dogs were.

And something looked out of his brown eyes that was nearer akin to his soul than any theologian would allow.

Everybody at Ingleside was fond of him, even Susan, although his one unfortunate propensity of sneaking into the spare room and going to sleep on the bed tried her affection sorely.

On this particular afternoon, Rilla had no quarrel on hand with existing conditions.

Hasn't June been a delightful month?

She asked, looking dreamily afar at the little quiet silvery clouds hanging so peacefully over Rainbow Valley.

We've had such lovely times and such lovely weather.

It has just been perfect every way.

I don't half like that, said Miss Oliver with a sigh.

It's ominous somehow.

A perfect thing is a gift of the gods, a sort of compensation for what is coming afterwards.

I've seen that so often that I don't care to hear people say they've had a perfect time.

June has been delightful, though of course it hasn't been very exciting, said Rilla.

The only exciting thing that has happened in the Glenn for a year was old Miss Mead fainting in church.

Sometimes I wish something dramatic would happen once in a while.

Don't wish it dramatic.

Things always have a bitterness for someone.

What a nice summer all you gay creatures will have, and me moping at Lowbridge.

You'll be over often, won't you?

I think there's going to be lots of fun this summer, though I'll just be on the fringe of things as usual, I suppose.

Isn't it horrid when people think you're a little girl?

When you're not?

There's plenty of time for you to be grown up, Rilla.

Don't wish your youth away.

It goes too quickly.

You'll begin to taste life soon enough.

Taste life?

I want to eat it.

Cried rilla laughing.

I want everything, everything a girl can have.

I'll be 15 in another month and then nobody can say I'm a child any longer.

I heard someone say once that the years from 15 to 19 are the best years in a girl's life.

I'm going to make them perfectly splendid.

Just fill them with fun.

There's no use thinking about what you're going to do.

You are tolerably sure not to do it.

Oh, but you do get a lot of fun out of the thinking, cried Rilla.

You think of nothing but fun, you monkey, said Miss Oliver indulgently, reflecting that Rilla's chin was really the last word in chins.

Well, what else is 15 for?

But have you any notion of going to college this fall?

No, nor any other fall.

I don't want to.

I never cared for all those ologies and isms NAN and I are so crazy about.

And there's five of us going to college already.

Surely that's enough.

There's bounds to be one dunce in every family.

I'm quite willing to be a dunce if I can be a pretty popular, delightful one.

I can be clever.

I have no talent at all and you can't imagine how comfortable it is.

Nobody expects me to do anything, so I'm never pestered to do it.

And I can't be a housewifely Cookly creature either.

I hate sewing and dusting.

And when Susan couldn't teach me to make biscuits.

Nobody could.

Father says I toil not, neither do I spin, therefore I must be a lily of the field, concluded Rilla with another laugh.

You are too young to give up your studies altogether, Rilla.

Oh, mother will put me through a course of reading next winter.

It will polish up her BA degree.

Luckily I like reading.

Don't look at me so sorrowfully and so disapprovingly, dearest.

I can't be sober and serious.

Everything looks so rosy and rainbowy to me.

Next month I'll be 15, and next year 16, and the year after that 17.

Could anything be more enchanting?

Rap wood, said Gertrude Oliver, half laughingly, half seriously.

Rap wood.

Rilla Myrilla, 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 next bite of Rilla of Ingleside.

Don't forget to sign up for our newsletter at Bite atetimebooks.com and check out the shop.

You can check out the show notes or our website, Bite atetimebooks.com for the rest of the links for our show.

Music.

Take a look and a look and let's see what we can find.

Take it.

Chapter my.

Chapter one mine at a time so many adventures and mountains we can climb.