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

Come with us as we release one bite a day of one of your favorite classic novels, plays & short stories. Bree reads these classics like she reads to her daughter, one chapter a day. If you love books or audiobooks and want something to listen to as you're getting ready, driving to work, or as you're getting ready for bed, check out Bite at a Time Books!

Follow, rate, and review Bite at a Time Books where we read you your favorite classics, one bite at a time. Available wherever you listen to podcasts.

Get exclusive Behind the Scenes content on our Patreon

We are now part of the Bite at a Time Books Productions network!

If you ever wondered what inspired your favorite classic novelist to write their stories, what was happening in their lives or the world at the time, check out Bite at a Time Books Behind the Story wherever you listen to podcasts.

Follow us on all the socials: Instagram - Twitter - Facebook - TikTok

Follow Bree at: Instagram - Twitter - Facebook

Let's see what we can find.

Take your chapter by chapter one Bite so many adventures and mountains we can climb take your word for wordline but line one part at our 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.

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 or on our website, Bite at a Timebooks.com.

Today we'll be continuing anne of the island by Lucy Maud Montgomery chapter 21 Roses of Yesterday the fortnight Anne spent in Bowling Broke was a very pleasant one, with a little undercurrent of vague pain and dissatisfaction running through it.

Whenever she thought about Gilbert, there was not, however, much time to think about him.

Mount Holly, the beautiful old Gordon homestead, was a very gay place, overrun by Phil's friends of both sexes.

There was quite a bewildering succession of drives, dances, picnics and boating parties, all expressively lumped together by Phil under the head of Jamborees.

Alec and DELONZO were so constantly on hand that Anne wondered if they ever did anything but dance attendance on that will of the wisp of a fill.

They were both nice, manly fellows, but Anne would not be drawn into any opinion as to which was the nicer.

And I depended.

So on you to help me make up my mind which of them I should promise to marry.

Mourned phil, you must do that for yourself.

You are quite expert at making up your mind as to whom other people should marry, retorted Anne, rather caustically.

Oh, that's a very different thing, said Phil.

Truly.

But the sweetest incident of Anne's adjourn in Bowling Broke was the visit to her birthplace, the little shabby yellow house in an out of the way street she had so often dreamed about.

She looked at it with delighted eyes as she and Phil turned in at the gate.

It's almost exactly as I've pictured it, she said.

There's no honeysuckle over the windows, but there is a lilac tree by the gate.

And yes, there are the muslin curtains in the windows.

How glad I am it is still painted yellow.

A very tall, very thin woman opened the door.

Yes, the Shirley lived here 20 years.

Ago, she said in answer to Ann's question.

They had it rented.

I remember them.

They both died a fever at Anket.

It was terrible sad.

They left a baby, I guess it's dead long ago.

It was a sickly thing.

Old Thomas and his wife took it as if they hadn't enough of their own.

It didn't die, said Anne, smiling.

I was that baby.

You don't say so.

Why, you have grown.

Exclaimed the woman as if she were much surprised that Anne was not still a baby.

Come to look at you, I see the resemblance.

You're complexed, like your paw.

He had red hair, but you favor your ma in your eyes and mouth.

She was a nice little thing.

My daughter went to school to her.

And was not crazy about her.

They was buried in one grave, and the school board put up a tombstone to them as a reward for faithful service.

Will you come in?

Will you let me go all over the house?

Asked Anne eagerly.

Laws?

Yes, you can if you like.

Don't take you long.

There ain't much of it.

I keep it my man to build a new kitchen, but he ain't one of your hustlers.

The parlor's in there, and there's two rooms upstairs just prowl about yourselves.

I've got to see to the baby.

The East Room was the one you were born in.

I remember your mom saying she loved to see the sunrise and I mind hearing that you were born just as the sun was rising and its light on your face was the first thing your ma saw saw.

Anne went up the narrow stairs and into that little East Room with a full heart.

It was as a shrine to her.

Here her mother had dreamed the exquisite happy dreams of anticipated motherhood.

Here that red sunrise light had fallen over them both in the sacred hour of birth.

Here her mother had died and looked about her reverently her eyes with tears.

It was for her one of the jeweled hours of life that gleam out radiantly forever in memory just to think of it.

Mother was younger than I am now when I was born, she whispered.

When Anne went downstairs, the lady of the house met her in the hall.

She held out a dusty little packet.

Tied with faded blue ribbon.

Here's a bundle of old letters I found in that closet upstairs.

When I came here, she said.

I don't know what they are.

I never bothered to look at them.

But the address on the top one is Miss Bertha Willis and that was your mom's maiden name.

You can take them if you'd care to have them.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you.

Cried Anne, clasping the packet rapturously.

That was all that was in the.

House, said her hostess.

The furniture was all sold to pay the doctor bills.

And Mrs.

Thomas got your maw's clothes and little things.

I reckon they didn't last long among that drove of Thomas youngsters.

They was destructive young animals, as I mind them.

I haven't one thing that belonged to my mother, said Anne Chokily.

I can never thank you enough for these letters.

You're quite welcome, Laws.

But your eyes is like your maws.

She could just about talk with hers.

Your father was sort of homely, but awful nice.

I mind hearing folks say when they were married that there was never two people more in love with each other.

Four creatures.

They didn't live much longer, but they was awful happy while they was alive, and I suppose that counts for a good deal.

Anne longed to get home to read her precious letters, but she made one little pilgrimage.

First she went alone to the green corner of the old Bowling Brook cemetery where her father and mother were buried and left on their grave the white flowers she carried.

Then she hastened back to Mount Holly, shut herself up in her room and read the letters.

Some are written by her father, some by her mother.

There were not many, only a dozen, and all for Walter and Bertha Shirley had not been often separated during their courtship.

The letters were yellow and faded and dim, blurred with the touch of passing years.

No profound words of wisdom were traced on the stained and wrinkled pages, but only lines of love and trust.

The sweetness of forgotten things clung to them.

The faroff fond imaginings of those long dead lovers.

Urtha Shirley had possessed the gift of writing letters which embodied the charming personality of the writer in words and thoughts that retained their beauty and fragrance after the lapse of time.

The letters were tender, intimate, sacred.

To Anne, the sweetest of all was the one written after her birth to the father on a brief absence.

It was full of a proud young mother's accounts of baby, her cleverness, her brightness, her thousand sweetnesses.

I love her best when she is asleep and better still when she is awake, Bertha Shirley had written in the postscript.

Probably it was the last sentence she had ever pinned.

The end was very near for her.

This has been the most beautiful day of my life, Anne said to Phil.

That night I've found my father and mother.

Those letters have made them real to me.

I'm not an orphan any longer.

I feel as if I had opened.

A book and found roses of yesterday sweet and beloved, between its leaves.

Thank you for joining Bite at the 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 atotimebooks or on our website, Bite at a Timebooks.com.

Again, my name is Brie Carlyle, and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of Anne of the island.