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

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Take your chapter by chapter one by adventures and mountains we can climb.

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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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Today we'll be continuing Anne of the island by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

Chapter 24.

Enter Jonas Prospect Point, August 20.

Dear Anne, spelled with an E, wrote Phil.

I must prop my eyelids open long enough to write you.

I've neglected you shamefully this summer, honey, but all my other correspondents have been neglected too.

I have a huge pile of letters to answer, so I must girt up the loins of my mind and ho in excuse my mixed metaphors, I'm fearfully sleepy.

Last night, cousin Emily and I were calling out of neighbors.

There were several other callers there, and as soon as those unfortunate creatures left, our hostess and her three daughters picked them all to pieces.

I knew they would begin on cousin Emily and me as soon as the door shut behind us.

When we came home, Mrs.

Lily informed us that the aforesaid neighbors hired boy was supposed to be down with scarlet fever.

You can always trust Mrs.

Lily to tell you cheerful things like that.

I have a horror of scarlet fever.

I couldn't sleep when I went to bed for thinking of it.

I tossed and tumbled about, dreaming fearful dreams when I did snooze for a minute, and at three I wakened up with a high fever, a sore throat and a raging headache.

I knew I had scarlet fever.

I got up in a panic and hunted up cousin Emily's doctor book to read up the symptoms, and I had them all.

So I went back to bed and knowing the worse, slept like a top the rest of the night, though why a top should sleep sounder than anything else, I never could understand.

But this morning I was quite well, so it couldn't have been a fever.

I suppose if I did catch it last night, it couldn't have developed so soon.

I can remember that in daytime, but at 03:00 at night I never can be logical.

I suppose you wonder what I'm doing at Prospect Point.

Well, I always like to spend a month of summer at the shore, and Father insists that I come to his second cousin Emily's select boarding house at Prospect Point.

So a fortnight ago I came as usual.

And as usual, old Uncle Mark Miller brought me from the station with his ancient buggy and what he calls his generous, purpose horse.

He's a nice old man and gave me a handful of pink peppermints.

Peppermints always seemed to me such a religious sort of candy.

I suppose because when I was a little girl, grandmother Gordon always gave them to me in church.

Once I asked, referring to the smell of peppermints, is that the odor of sanctity?

I didn't like to eat Uncle Mark's peppermints because he just fished them loose out of his pocket and had to pick some rusty nails and other things from among them before he gave them to me.

But I wouldn't hurt his dear old feelings for anything, so I carefully sewed them along the road at intervals.

When the last one was gone, Uncle Mark said a little rebukingly, you shouldn't ate all them candies to anked Ms.

Phil.

You likely will have the stomach ache.

Cousin Emily has only five borders besides myself, four old ladies and one young man.

My right hand neighbor is Mrs.

Lily.

She's one of those people who seem to take a gruesome pleasure in detailing all their many aches and pains and sicknesses.

You cannot mention any ailment.

But, she says, shaking her head, I know too well what that is.

And then you get all the details.

Jonas declares he once spoke of locomotor ataxia and hearing, and she said she knew too well what that was.

She suffered from it for ten years and was finally cured by a traveling doctor.

Who is Jonas?

Just wait, Anne Shirley.

You'll hear all about Jonas in proper time and place.

He's not to be mixed up with esteemable old ladies.

My left hand neighbor at the table is Mrs.

Finney.

She always speaks with a wailing Dolores voice.

You're nervously expecting her to burst into tears every moment.

She gives you the impression that life to her is indeed a veil of tears, and that a smile never to speak of a laugh is a frivolity.

Truly reprehensible.

She has a worse opinion of me than Aunt Jamesina, and she doesn't love me.

Hard to atone for it as Auntie Jay does either.

Miss Maria Grimsby sits caddy corner from me.

The first day I came, I remarked to Miss Maria that it looked a little like rain, and Miss Maria laughed.

I said the road from the station was very pretty, and Miss Maria laughed.

I said there seemed to be a few mosquitoes left yet, and Miss Maria laughed.

I said that Prospect Point was as beautiful as ever, and Miss Maria laughed.

If I were to say to Miss Maria, my father has hanged himself, my mother has taken poison, my brother is in the penitentiary, and I am in the last stages of consumption, miss Maria would laugh she can't help it.

She was born so, but it is very sad and awful.

The fifth old lady is Mrs.

Grant.

She's a sweet old thing, but she never says anything but good of anybody, and so she is a very uninteresting conversationalist.

And now for Jonas.

Anne that first day I came, I saw a young man sitting opposite me at the table, smiling at me as if he had known me from my cradle.

I knew, for Uncle Mark had told me that his name was Jonas Blake, that he was a theological student from St.

Columbia and that he had taken charge of the Point Prospect Mission Church for the summer.

He's a very ugly young man, really, the ugliest young man I've ever seen.

He has a big, loose jointed figure with absurdly long legs.

His hair is toe color and lank.

His eyes are green and his mouth is big.

And his ears but I never think about his ears if I can help it.

He has a lovely voice if you shut your eyes.

He is adorable.

And he certainly has a beautiful soul.

In this position.

We were good chums right away.

Of course.

He's a graduate of Redmond, and that is the link between us.

We fished and boated together, and we walked on the sands by moonlight.

He didn't look so homely by moonlight.

And, oh, he was niceness.

Fairly exhaled from him.

The old ladies, except Mrs.

Grant, don't approve of Jonas because he laughs and jokes and because he evidently likes the society of frivolous me better than theirs.

Somehow, Anne, I don't want him to think me frivolous.

This is ridiculous.

Why should I care what a toehaired person called Jonas, whom I never saw before, thinks of me?

Last Sunday, Jonas preached in the village church.

I went, of course, but I couldn't realize that Jonas was going to preach.

The fact that he was a minister, or going to be one, persisted in seeming a huge joke to me while Jonas preached.

And by the time he had preached ten minutes, I felt so small and insignificant that I thought I must be invisible to the naked eye.

Jonas never said a word about women, and he never looked at me.

But I realized then and there what a pitiful, frivolous, small, sold little butterfly I was and how horribly different I must be from Jonas's ideal woman.

She would be grand and strong and noble.

He was so earnest and tender and true.

He was everything a minister ought to be.

I wondered how I could ever thought him ugly, but he really is, with those inspired eyes and that intellectual brow which the roughly falling hair hit on weekdays.

It was a splendid sermon, and I could have listened to it forever, and it made me feel utterly wretched.

Oh, I wish I was like you, Anne.

He caught up with me on the road home and grinned as cheerfully as usual, but his grin could never deceive me again.

I had seen the real Jonas.

I wondered if he could ever see the real Phil, whom nobody, not even you, Anne, has ever seen yet.

Jonas, I said.

I forgot to call him Mr.

Blake.

Wasn't it dreadful?

But there are times when things like that don't matter.

Jonas, you were born to be a minister.

You couldn't be anything else.

No, I couldn't, he said soberly.

I tried to be something else for a long time.

I didn't want to be a minister.

But I came to see at last that it was the work given me to do and God helping me, I shall try to do it.

His voice was low and reverent.

I thought that he would do his work and do it well and nobly and happy.

The woman fitted by nature and training to help him do it.

She would be no feather blown about by every fickle wind of fancy.

She would always know what hat to put on.

Probably she would have only one.

Ministers never have much money, but she wouldn't mind having one hat, or none at all, because she would have Jonas.

And Shirley, don't you dare to say or hint or think that I've fallen in love with Mr.

Blake.

Could I care for a lank, poor, ugly theologue named Jonas?

His Uncle Mark says it's impossible, and what's more, it's improbable.

Good night, Phil.

PS.

It is impossible, but I'm horribly afraid.

It's true.

I'm happy and wretched and scared.

He can never care for me.

I know.

Do you think I could ever develop into a passable minister's wife Anne?

And would they expect me to lead in prayer?

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