Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the thirty-first chapter of Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

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Take it chapter by chapter.

One Bite so many adventures and mountains we can't climb.

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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We are currently running a contest on.

Our social media for the duration of season ten to win a copy of the complete Anifgreen Gables series.

Today we will be continuing anifgreen Gables.

By Lucy Maud Montgomery.

Chapter 31 where the Brook and River Meet anne had her good summer and enjoyed it wholeheartedly.

She and Diana fairly lived outdoors, reveling in all the delights that Lovers Lane and the dryad's bubble and Willowmir and Victoria Island afforded.

Marilla offered no objections to Anne's gypsyings.

The Spencervale doctor who had come the night Minnie May had the crew, met Anne at the house of a patient one afternoon early on vacation, looked her over sharply, screwed up his mouth, shook his head, and sent a message to Marilla Cuspert by another person.

It was keep that redheaded girl of yours in the open air all summer and don't let her read books until she gets more spring into her step.

This message frightened Marilla wholesomely.

She read Anne's death warrant by consumption in it, unless it was scrupulously obeyed.

As a result, Anne had the golden summer of her life as far as freedom and frolic went.

She walked, rode, buried and dreamed to her heart's content.

And when September came, she was bright eyed and alert, with a step that would have satisfied the Spencervale doctor and a heart full of ambition and zest once more.

I feel just like studying with Might.

And Maine, she declared as she brought.

Her books down from the attic.

Oh, you good old friends.

I'm glad to see your honest faces once more.

Yes, even you, Geometry.

I've had a perfectly beautiful summer, Marilla, and now I'm rejoicing as a strong man to run a race, as Mr.

Allen said last Sunday.

Doesn't Mr.

Allen preach magnificent sermons?

Mrs.

Lynn says he is improving every day and the first thing we know, some city church will gobble him up and then we'll be left and have to turn to and break in another green preacher.

But I don't see the use of meeting trouble halfway, do you, Marilla?

I think it would be better just to enjoy Mr.

Allen while we have him.

If I were a man, I think I'd be a minister.

They can have such an influence for good if their theology is sound and it must be thrilling to preach splendid sermons and stir your hearer's hearts.

Why can't women be ministers, Marilla?

I asked Mrs Lynn that, and she.

Was shocked and said it would be a scandalous thing.

She said there might be female ministers in the States, and she believed there was.

But thank goodness we hadn't got to that stage in Canada yet, and she hoped we never would.

But I don't see why.

I think women would make splendid ministers when there's a social to be got up or a church tea or anything else.

To raise money, the women have to turn to and do the work.

I'm sure Mrs Lynde can pray every bit as well as Superintendent Belle.

And I've no doubt she could preach too, with a little practice.

Yes, I believe she could, said Marilla dryly.

She does plenty of unofficial preaching as it is.

Nobody has much of a chance to go wrong in Avon Lee with Rachel to oversee them.

Marilla, said Anne in a burst of.

Confidence, I want to tell you something and ask you what you think about it.

It has worried me terribly.

On Sunday afternoons, that is.

When I think especially about such matters, I do really want to be good.

And when I'm with you or Mrs.

Allen or Miss Stacy, I want it more than ever.

And I want to do just what would please you and what you would approve of.

Mostly when I'm with Mrs Lynde, I feel desperately wicked and as if I wanted to go and do the very thing she tells me I oughtn't to do, I feel irresistibly tempted to do it.

Now.

What do you think is the reason I feel like that?

Do you think it's because I'm really bad and unregenerate?

Marilla looked dubious for a moment, then she laughed.

If you are, I guess I am too, Anne, for Rachel often has that very effect on me.

I sometimes think she'd have more of an influence for good, as you say yourself, if she didn't keep nagging people to do right.

There should have been a special commandment against nagging, but there I shouldn't talk so.

Rachel is a good Christian woman and she means well.

There isn't a kinder soul in Avon Lee, and she never shirks her share of work.

I'm so very glad you feel the.

Same, said Anne decidedly.

It's so encouraging.

I can't worry so much over that after this.

But I dare say there'll be other things to worry me.

They keep coming up new all the time.

Things to perplex you, you know, you settle one question and there's another right after.

There are so many things to be thought over and decided when you're beginning to grow up.

It keeps me busy all the time thinking them over and deciding what is right.

It's a serious thing to grow up, isn't it, Marilla?

But when I have such good friends as you and Matthew and Mrs.

Allen and Miss Stacy.

I ought to grow up successfully, and I'm sure it will be my own fault if I don't.

I feel it's a great responsibility because I have only the one chance.

If I don't grow up right, I can't go back and begin over again.

I've grown two inches this summer.

Marilla.

Mr.

Gillis measured me at Ruby's party.

I'm so glad you made my new dresses longer.

That dark green one is so pretty.

And it was so sweet of you to put on the flounce.

Of course, I know it wasn't really necessary, but flounces are so stylish this fall and Josie Pi has flounces on all her dresses.

I know I'll be able to study better because of mine.

I shall have such a comfortable feeling deep down in my mind about that flounce.

It's worth something to have that admitted.

Marilla.

Ms Stacy came back to Avonlea's School and found all her pupils eager for work once more.

Especially did the Queen's class gird up their loins for the fray, for at the end of the coming year, dimly shadowing their pathway, already loomed up that fateful thing known as the entrance, at the thought of which one and all felt their hearts sink into their very shoes.

Suppose they did not pass?

That thought was doomed to haunt Anne through the waking hours of that winter Sunday afternoons, inclusive to the almost entire exclusion of moral and theological problems.

When Anne had bad dreams, she found herself staring miserably at past lists of the entrance exams, where Gilbert Blythe's name was Blazoned at the top, and in which Hearst did not appear at all.

But it was a jolly, busy, happy, swift flying winter.

Schoolwork was as interesting, class rivalry as absorbing as of your new worlds of thought, feeling and ambition.

Fresh, fascinating fields of unexplored knowledge seemed to be opening out before Anne's eager eyes.

Hills, peeped or hill, and Alps on Alps arose.

Much of all this was due to Miss Stacy's tactful, careful, broadminded kindness.

She led her class to think and explore and discover for themselves and encourage strang from the old beaten paths to a degree that quite shocked Mrs Lynde and the school trustees, who viewed all innovations on established methods rather dubiously.

Apart from her studies, anne expanded socially for Marilla mindful of the Spencer Vale doctor's dictum, no longer vetoed occasional outings.

The debating club flourished and gave several concerts.

There were one or two parties almost verging on grownup affairs.

There were slay drives and skating frolics galore between times, and grew shooting up so rapidly that Marilla was astonished one.

Day when they were standing side by.

Side to find the girl was taller than herself.

Why, Anne, how you've grown, she said, almost unbelievingly.

A sigh followed on the words.

Marla felt a queer regret over Anne's inches.

The child she had learned to love.

Had vanished somehow, and here was this tall, serious eyed girl of 15 with a thoughtful brows and a proudly poised little head in her place.

Marla loved the girl as much as.

She had loved the child, but she.

Was conscious of a queer, sorrowful sense of loss.

And that night, when Anne had gone.

To prayer meeting with Diana, marilla sat.

Alone in the wintry twilight and indulged in the weakness of a cry.

Matthew, coming in with a lantern, caught her at it and gazed at her in such consternation that Marilla had to laugh through her tears.

I was thinking about Anne, she explained.

She's got to be such a big girl, and she'll probably be away from us next winter.

I'll miss her terrible.

She'll be able to come home often.

Comforted Matthew, to whom Anne was as yet and always would be the little eager girl he had brought home from Bright River on that June evening four years before.

The Branch railroad would be built to Carmody by that time.

It won't be the same thing as.

Having her here all the time, sighed Marla gloomily, determined to enjoy her luxury of grief uncomforted.

But there men can't understand these things.

There were other changes in Anne, no less real than the physical change.

For one thing, she became much quieter.

Perhaps she thought all the more and dreamed as much as ever, but she certainly talked less.

Marilla noticed and commented on this also.

You don't chatter half as much as you used to, Anne, nor use half as many big words.

What has come over you?

Anne colored and laughed a little as she dropped her book and looked dreamily out of the window, where big, fat red buds were bursting out on the creeper in response to the lure of the spring sunshine.

I don't know.

I don't want to talk as much, she said, denting her chin thoughtfully with her forefinger.

It's nicer to think dear, pretty thoughts and keep them in one's heart like treasures.

I don't like to have them laughed at or wandered over.

And somehow I don't want to use big words anymore.

It's almost a pity, isn't it, now that I'm really grown big enough to say them if I did want to.

It's fun to be almost grown up in some ways, but it's not the kind of fun I expected, Marilla.

There's so much to learn and do.

And think that there isn't time for big words.

Besides, Miss Stacey says the short ones are much stronger and better.

She makes us write all our essays.

As simply as possible.

It was hard at first.

I was so used to crowding in all the fine big words I could think of, and I thought of any number of them.

But I've got used to it now, and I see it so much better.

What has become of your story club?

I haven't heard you speak of it for a long time.

The story club isn't in existence any longer.

We hadn't time for it, and anyhow, I think we had got tired of it.

It was silly to be writing about love and murder and elopements and mysteries.

Miss Stacey sometimes has us write a story for training and composition, but she won't let us write anything but what might happen in Avonlea in our own lives.

She criticizes it very sharply and makes us criticize our own, too.

I never thought my compositions had so many faults until I began to look for them myself.

I felt so ashamed.

I wanted to give up altogether.

But Miss Stacey said I could learn to write well if I only trained myself to be my own severest critic.

And so I am trying to.

You've only two more months before the insurance, said Marilla.

Do you think you'll be able to get through?

Ann shivered.

I don't know.

Sometimes I think I'll be alright, and then I get horribly afraid.

We've studied hard, and Miss Stacy has drilled us thoroughly, but we may not.

Get through for all that.

We've each got a stumbling block.

Mine is geometry, of course, and James is Latin, and Ruby and Charlie's algebra, and Josie's is arithmetic moody.

Spurgeon says he feels it in his.

Bones that he's going to fail in English history.

Miss Stacey is going to give us examinations in June, just as hard as.

We'Ll have at the entrance.

And mark us just as strictly, so we'll have some idea.

I wish it was all over, Marilla.

It haunts me sometimes.

I wake up in the night and wonder what I'll do if I don't pass.

Why, go to school next year and try again?

Said Marilla unconcernedly.

Oh, I don't believe I'd have the heart for it.

It would be such a disgrace to fail, especially if the others pass and I get so nervous in an examination that I'm likely to make a mess of it.

I wish I had nerves like Jane Andrews.

Nothing rattles her.

Anne sighed, and dragging her eyes from the witcheries of the spring world, the beckoning day of breeze and blue and the green things upspringing in the garden, buried herself resolutely in her book.

There would be Other springs, but if she did not succeed in passing the entrance, anne felt convinced that she would never recover sufficiently to enjoy 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.

If you want to see exclusive behind the scenes of our show, follow us on YouTube.

We would also love for you to.

Drop us a rating on your favorite.

Podcast platform and share our show with your friends.

You can catch us on all the.

Social medias at Bite at a Time Books.

We are currently running a contest on our social media for the duration of.

Season ten to win a copy of the complete Annafgreen Gables series.

Again, my name is Brie Carlyle, and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of Anna's Green Gables.