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

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Take a look and broken let's see what we can find take your chapter by chapter one bite adventures and mountains we can't climb take it worth a word line but line we're part at a time.

Welcome to Bite at a.

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My name is Brie Carlyle and I love to read and wanted to share.

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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 Anif Green Gables series.

Today we will be continuing anif Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

Chapter 26 the Story Club is formed.

Junior Aven Lee found it hard to settle down to humdrum existence again.

To Anne in particular, things seemed fearfully flat, stale and unprofitable after the goblet of excitement she had been sipping for weeks.

Could she go back to the former quiet pleasures of those far away days before the concert?

At first, as she told Diana, she did not really think she could.

I'm positively certain, Diana, that life can never be quite the same again as it was in those olden days, she.

Said mournfully, as if referring to a period of at least 50 years back.

Perhaps after a while I'll get used to it, but I'm afraid concerts spoil people for everyday life.

I suppose that is why Marilla disapproves of them.

Marilla is such a sensible woman.

It must be a great deal better to be sensible.

But still, I don't believe I'd really want to be a sensible person because they are so unromantic.

Mrs.

Lynn says there's no danger of my ever being one, but you can never tell.

I feel just now that I may grow up to be sensible yet, but perhaps that is only because I'm tired.

I simply couldn't sleep last night forever.

So long I just lay awake and imagine the concert over and over again.

That's one splendid thing about such affairs.

It's so lovely to look back to them.

Eventually, however, Avonlea's school slipped back into its old groove and took up its old interests.

To be sure, the concert left traces.

Ruby Gillis and Emma White, who had quarrelled over a point of precedence in their platform seats, no longer sat at the same desk, and a promising friendship of three years was broken up.

Josie Pi and Julia Bell did not speak for three months because Josie Pye had told Bessy Right that Julia Bell's Bow.

When she got up to recite made.

Her think of a chicken jerking its head.

And Bessie told Julia none of the Sloans would have any dealing with the bells.

Because the bells had declared that the Sloans had too much to do in the program.

And the Sloans had retorted that the bells were not capable of doing the little they had to do properly.

Finally, Charlie Sloan fought Moody Spurgeon McPherson because Moody Spurgeon had said that Anne Shirley put on airs about her recitations and Moody Spurgeon was licked.

Consequently, Moody Spurgeon's sister, Ella May, would not speak to Anne Shirley all the rest of the winter, with the exception of these trifling frictions work in Miss Stacy's little kingdom, went on with regularity and smoothness.

The winter week slipped by.

It was an unusually mild winter, with so little snow that Anne and Diana.

Could go to school nearly every day by way of the birch path.

On Anne's birthday, they were tripping lightly down it, keeping eyes and ears alert amid all their chatter, for Miss Stacy had told them that they must soon ride a composition on a winter's walk in the woods, and it behooved them to be observant.

Just think, Diana, I'm 13 years old.

Today, remarked Anne in an odd voice.

I can scarcely realize that I'm in my teens.

When I woke this morning, it seemed to me that everything must be different.

You've been 13 for a month, so I suppose it doesn't seem such a novelty to you as it does to me.

It makes life seem so much more interesting.

In two more years, I'll be really grown up.

It's a great comfort to think that I'll be able to use big words then without being laughed at.

Ruby Gillis says she means to have.

A bow as soon as she's 15, said Diana.

Ruby Gillis thinks of nothing but bows, said Anna Stainfully.

She's actually delighted when anyone writes her name up in a take notice for all.

She pretends to be so mad.

But I'm afraid that is an uncharitable speech.

Mrs.

Allen says we should never make uncharitable speeches.

But they do slip out so often before you think, don't they?

I simply can't talk about Josie PY without making an uncharitable speech, so I never mentioned her at all.

You may have noticed that I'm trying to be as much like Mrs.

Allen as I possibly can, for I think she's perfect.

Mr.

Allen thinks so, too.

Mrs.

Lynn says he just worships the ground she treads on, and she doesn't really think it right for a minister to set his affection so much on a mortal being.

But then, Diana, even ministers are human and have their besetting sins just like everybody else.

I had an interesting talk with Mrs.

Allen about besetting sins last Sunday afternoon.

There are just a few things that's proper to talk about on Sundays, and that is one of them.

My besetting sin is imagining too much and forgetting my duties.

I'm striving very hard to overcome it.

And now that I'm really 13, perhaps I'll get on better.

In four more years we'll be able to put our hair up, said Diana.

Alice Bella is only 16 and she is wearing hers up.

But I think that's ridiculous.

I shall wait until I'm 17.

If I had Alice Bell's crooked nose, said Anne, decidedly I wouldn't.

But there I won't say what I was going to because it was extremely uncharitable.

Besides, I was comparing it with my own nose, and that's vanity.

I'm afraid I think too much about my nose ever since I heard that compliment about it long ago.

It really is a great comfort to me.

Oh, Diana, look.

There's a rabbit.

There's something to remember for our woods composition.

I really think the woods are just as lovely in winter as in summer.

They're so white and still, as if they were asleep and dreaming pretty dreams.

I won't mind riding that composition when its time comes, sighed Diana.

I can manage to write about the woods, but the one we're to hand in Monday is terrible.

The idea of Miss Stacy telling us to write a story out of our own heads.

Why, it's as easy as a wink, said Anne.

It's easy for you because you have.

An imagination, retorted Diana.

But what would you do if you.

Had been born without one?

I suppose you have your composition all.

Done and nodded, trying hard not to look virtuously, complacent and failing miserably.

I wrote it last Monday evening.

It's called the jealous rival or in death, not divided.

I read it to Marilla and she.

Said it was stuff and nonsense.

Then I read it to Matthew and he said it was fine.

That is the kind of critic I like.

It's a sad, sweet story.

I just cried like a child while I was writing it.

It's about two beautiful maidens called Cordelia Montmorincy and Geraldine Seymour, who live in the same village and were devotedly attached to each other.

Cordelia was a regal brunette with a coronet of midnight hair and dusky flashing eyes.

Gerald Dean was a queenly blonde with hair like spun gold and velvety purple eyes.

I never saw anybody with purple eyes, said Diana dubiously.

Neither did I.

I just imagined them.

I wanted something out of the common.

Geraldine had an alabaster brow, too.

I found out what an alabaster brow is.

That is one of the advantages of being 13.

You know so much more than you did when you were only twelve.

Well, what became of Cordelia and Geraldine?

Asked Diana, who was beginning to feel.

Rather interested in their fate.

They grew in beauty side by side until they were 16.

Then Bertram de Ver came to their native village and fell in love with the fair Geraldine.

He saved her life when her horse ran away with her in a carriage and she fainted in his arms and he carried her home 3 miles, because, you understand, the carriage was all smashed up.

I found it rather hard to imagine the proposal because I had no experience to go by.

I asked Ruby Gillis if she knew anything about how men proposed, because I thought she'd likely be an authority on the subject, having so many sisters married.

Ruby told me she was hid in the hall pantry when Malcolm Andres proposed to her sister Susan.

She said Malcolm told Susan that his dad had given him the farm in his own name and then said, what.

Do you say, darling pet, if we get hitch this fall?

And Susan said, yes.

No, I don't know.

Let me see.

And there they were, engaged as quickly as that.

But I didn't think that sort of a proposal was a very romantic one.

So in the end, I had to imagine it out as well as I could.

I made it very flowery and poetical.

And Bertram went on his knees.

Although Ruby Gillis says it isn't done nowadays, gerald Dean accepted him in a speech a page long.

I can tell you I took a lot of trouble with that speech.

I rewrote it five times and I look upon it as my masterpiece.

Bertram gave her a diamond ring and a ruby necklace and told her they would go to Europe for a wedding tour, for he was immensely wealthy.

But then, alas, shadows began to darken over their path.

Cordelia was secretly in love with Bertram herself, and when Geraldine told her about the engagement, she was simply furious, especially when she saw the necklace in the diamond ring.

All her affection for Geraldine turned to bitter hate and she vowed that she should never marry Bertram.

But she pretended to be Geraldine's friend, the same as ever.

One evening, they were standing on the bridge over a rushing, turbulent stream, and Cordelia, thinking they were alone, pushed Gerald Dean over the brink with a wild mocking.

Ha ha.

But Bertram saw it all, and he at once plunged into the current exclaiming.

I will save thee, my peerless Geraldine.

But, alas, he had forgotten he couldn't swim.

And they were both drowned, clasped in each other's arms.

Their bodies were washed ashore.

Soon afterwards, they were buried in the one grave and their funeral was most imposing.

Diana, it's so much more romantic to end the story with a funeral than with a wedding.

As for Cordelia, she went insane with remorse and was shut up in a lunatic asylum.

I thought that was a poetical retribution for her crime.

How perfectly lovely, sighed Diana, who belonged.

To Matthew school of critics.

I don't see how you can make up such thrilling things out of your own head, Anne.

I wish my imagination was as good as yours.

It would be if you'd only cultivate it, said Anne.

Cheeringly I've just thought of a plan, Diana.

Let you and me have a story club all our own.

And write stories for practice.

I'll help you along until you can do them by yourself.

You want to cultivate your imagination, you know.

Ms.

Stacey says so, only we must take the right way.

I told her about the haunted wood, but she said we went the wrong.

Way about it in that this was how the story club came into existence.

It was limited to Diana and Anne at first, but soon it was extended to include Jane Andrews and Ruby Gillis, and one or two others who felt that their imaginations needed cultivating.

No boys were allowed in it, although Ruby Gillis opined that their admission would make it more exciting, and each member had to produce one story a week.

It's extremely interesting.

Anne told Marilla.

Each girl has to read her story out loud, and then we talk it over.

We're going to keep them all sacredly and have them to read to our descendants.

We each ride under a nondeploom.

Mine is Rosamond Montmorinsey.

All the girls do pretty well.

Ruby Gillis is rather sentimental.

She puts too much love making into her stories.

And you know, too much is worse than too little.

Jane never puts any because she says it makes her feel so silly when she had to read it aloud.

Jane's stories are extremely sensible.

Then Diana puts too many murders into hers.

She says most of the time she doesn't know what to do with the people, so she kills them off to get rid of them.

I mostly always have to tell them what to write about, but that isn't hard, for I've millions of ideas.

I think this story writing business is the foolishness yet, scoffed Marilla.

You'll get a pack of nonsense into your heads and waste time.

That should be put on your lessons.

Reading stories is bad enough, but writing them is worse.

But we're so careful to put a.

Moral into them all, marilla explained Anne.

I insist upon that.

All the good people are rewarded, and all the bad ones are suitably punished.

I'm sure that must have a wholesome effect.

The moral is the great thing.

Mr.

Allen says so I read one of my stories to him and Mrs.

Allen, and they both agreed that the moral was excellent, only they laughed in the wrong places.

I like it better when people cry.

Jane and Ruby almost always cry when.

I come to the pathetic parts.

Diana wrote her Aunt Josephine about our club, and her Aunt Josephine wrote back that we were to send her some of our stories.

So we copied out four of our very best and sent them.

Miss Josephine Barry wrote back that she had never read anything so amusing in her life.

That kind of puzzled us because the stories were all very pathetic and almost everybody died.

But I'm glad Ms.

Berry liked them.

It shows our club is doing some good in the world.

Mrs.

Allen says that ought to be our object in everything.

I do really try to make it my object, but I forget so often when I'm having fun.

I hope I shall be a little like Mrs.

Allen when I grow up.

Do you think there's any prospect of it, Marilla?

I shouldn't say there was a great deal.

Was Marilla's encouraging answer?

I'm sure Mrs.

Allen was never such a silly, forgetful little girl as you are.

No, but she wasn't always as good.

As she is now, either, said Anne seriously.

She told me so herself.

That is, she said she was a dreadful mischief when she was a girl and was always getting into scrapes.

I felt so encouraged when I heard that.

Is it very wicked of me, Marilla, to feel encouraged when I hear that other people have been bad and mischievous?

Mrs.

Lynn says it is.

Mrs.

Lynn says she always feels shocked when she hears of anyone ever having been naughty, no matter how small they were.

Mrs.

Lynn says she wants her to minister confessed that when he was a.

Boy, he stole a strawberry tart out.

Of his aunt's pantry, and she never had any respect for that minister again.

Now, I wouldn't have felt that way.

I'd have thought that it was real noble of him to confess it, and I'd have thought what an encouraging thing it would be for small boys nowadays who do naughty things and are sorry for them to know that perhaps they may grow up to be ministers in spite of it.

That's how I'd feel, Marilla.

The way I feel at present.

Anne said Marilla, is that it's high time you had those dishes washed.

You've taken half an hour longer than.

You should with all your chattering.

Learn to work first and talk afterwards.

Thank you for joining Bite Edit Time.

Books today while we read a byte.

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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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 annaf Green Gables series.

Again, my name is Brie Carlyle, and I hope you come back tomorrow for.

The next bite of ANAF Green Gables.