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

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Take your chapter by chapter one by so many adventures and mountains we can climb take your word for word line by line we're part at our time.

Welcome to Bite at A Time Books, where we read you your favorite classics one byte at a time.

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Today we'll be continuing anne of Aven Lee by Lucy Maud Montgomery, 21 sweet Miss Lavender school opened, and Anne returned to her work with fewer theories but considerably more experience.

She had several new pupils, six and seven year olds, just venturing round eyed into a world of wonder.

Among them were Davy and Dora.

Davy sat with Milty Bolter, who had been going to school for a year and was therefore quite a man of the world.

Dora had made a compact at Sunday school the previous Sunday to sit with Lily Sloan, but Lily Sloan not coming the first day.

She was temporarily assigned to Mirabelle Cotton, who was ten years old and therefore Endora's Eyes, one of the big girls.

I think school is great fun, Davy told Marilla when he got home that night.

You said, I'd find it hard to sit still, and I did.

You mostly do tell the truth, I notice, but you can wiggle your legs about under the desk, and that helps a lot.

It's splendid to have so many boys to play with.

I sit with Milty Bolter, and he's fine.

He's longer than me, but I'm wider.

It's nicer to sit in the back seats, but you can't sit there till your legs grow long enough to touch the floor.

Milty drawed a picture of Anne on his slate, and it was awful ugly, and I told him if he made pictures of Anne like that, I'd lick him at recess.

I thought first I'd draw one of him and put horns and a tail on it, but I was afraid it would hurt his feelings.

And Anne says you should never hurt anyone's feelings.

It seems it's dreadful to have your feelings hurt.

It's better to knock a boy down than hurt his feelings.

If you must do something.

Milty said he wasn't scared of me, but he'd just as soon call in somebody else to oblige me.

So he rubbed out Anne's name and printed Barbara Shaw's under it.

Milty doesn't like Barbara because she called him a sweet little boy, and once she patted him on his head, dora said, Primly that she liked school, but she was very quiet, even for her.

And when at twilight Marilla bade her go upstairs to bed, she hesitated and began to cry.

I'm frightened, she sobbed.

I don't want to go upstairs alone in the dark.

What notion have you got into your head now?

Demanded Marilla.

I'm sure you've gone to bed alone all summer and never been frightened before.

Dora still continued to cry, so Anne picked her up, cuddled her sympathetically, and whispered, tell Anne all about it, sweetheart.

What are you frightened of?

Mirabel.

Cotton's uncle sobbed.

Dora.

Mirabel Cotton told me all about her family today in school.

Nearly everybody in her family has died all her grandfathers and grandmothers and ever so many uncles and aunts.

They have a habit of dying.

Mirabelle says Mirabelle is awful proud of having so many dead relations.

And she told me what they all died of and what they said and how they looked in their coffins.

And Mirabelle says one of her uncles was seen walking around the house after he was buried.

Her mother saw him.

I don't mind the rest so much, but I can't help thinking about that uncle.

Anne went upstairs with Dora and sat by her until she fell asleep the next day.

Mirabelle Cotton was kept in at recess and gently but firmly given to understand that when you were so unfortunate as to possess an uncle who persisted in walking about houses after he had been decently interred it was not in good taste to talk about that eccentric gentleman to your duskmate of tender years.

Mirabelle thought this very harsh.

The Cotton's had not much to boast of.

How was she to keep up her prestige among her schoolmates if she was forbidden to make capital out of the family ghost?

December slipped by into a gold and crimson graciousness of October 1.

Friday evening, Diana came over IDA letter from Ella Kimball today, anne and she wants us to go over to T tomorrow afternoon to meet her cousin Irene Trent from town.

But we can't get one of our horses to go, for they're all being used tomorrow, and your pony is lame, so I suppose we can't go.

Why can't we walk?

Suggested Anne.

If we go straight back through the woods, we'll strike the West Grafton Road not far from the Kimball place.

I was through that way last winter, and I know the road.

It's no more than 4 miles, and we won't have to walk home, for Oliver Kimball will be sure to drive us.

He'll be only too glad of the excuse, for he goes to see Carrie Sloan and they say his father will hardly ever let him have a horse.

It was accordingly arranged that they should walk.

And the following afternoon they set out going by way of Lover's Lane to the back of the Cuspert farm where they found a road leading into the heart of acres of glimmering beach and maple woods, which were all in a wondrous glow of flame and gold, lying in a great purple stillness and peace.

It's as if the year we're kneeling to pray in a vast cathedral full of mellow stained light, isn't it?

Said Anne dreamily.

It doesn't seem right to hurry through it, does it?

It seems irreverent, like running in a church.

We must hurry, though, said Diana, glancing at her watch.

We've left ourselves little enough time as it is.

Well, I'll walk fast, but don't ask me to talk, said Anne, quickening her pace.

I just want to drink the day's loveliness in.

I feel as if she were holding it out to my lips like a cup of airy wine, and I'll take a sip at every step.

Perhaps it was because she was so absorbed and drinking it in that Anne took the left turning.

When they came to a fork in the road, she should have taken the right, but ever onward she counted it the most fortunate mistake of her life.

They came out finally to a lonely grassy road with nothing in sight along it but ranks of spruce saplings.

Why, where are we?

Exclaimed Diana in bewilderment.

This isn't the West Grafton road.

No, it's the baseline road in Middle Grafton, said Anne, rather shamefacedly.

I must have taken the wrong turning at the fork.

I know where we are exactly, but we must be all of 3 miles from Kimball still.

Then we can't get there by five for its 04:30.

Now, said Diana with a despairing look at her watch.

We'll arrive after they have their tea, and they'll all have a bother of getting ours over again.

We'd better turn back and go home, suggested Anne humbly, but Diana, after consideration, vetoed this.

No, we may as well go and spend the evening, since we have come this far.

A few yards further on, the girls came to a place where the road forked again.

Which of these do we take?

Asked Diana dubiously.

Anne shook her head.

I don't know, and we can't afford to make any more mistakes.

Here's a gate and a lane leading right into the wood.

There must be a house at the other side.

Let us go down and inquire.

What a romantic old lane this is, said Diana, as they walked along its twists and turns.

It ran under patriarchal old FIRs whose branches met above, creating a perpetual gloom in which nothing except moss could grow.

On either hand were brown wood floors, crossed here and there by fallen lances of sunlight.

All was very still and remote, as if the world and the cares of the world were far away.

I feel as if we were walking through an enchanted forest, said Anne in a hushed tone.

Do you suppose we'll ever find our way back to the real world again, Diana?

We shall presently come to a palace with a spellbound princess in it.

I think.

Around the next turn they came in sight.

Not indeed of a palace.

But of a little house.

Almost as surprising as a palace would have been in this province of conventional wooden farmhouses.

All as much alike in general characteristics as if they had grown from the same seed and stopped short in rapture.

And Diana exclaimed, oh, I know where we are now.

That is the little stone house where Miss Lavender Lewis lives.

Echo Lotche calls it.

I think I've often heard of it, but I've never seen it before.

Isn't it a romantic spot?

It's the sweetest, prettiest place I ever saw or imagined, said Anne, delightedly.

It looks like a bit out of a storybook or a dream.

The house was a low eavesd structure, built of undressed blocks of red island sandstone, with a little peaked roof, out of which pierced two dormer windows with quaint wooden hoods over them and two great chimneys.

The whole house was covered with a luxuriant growth of ivy, finding easy foothold on the rough stonework, and turned by autumn frosts to most beautiful bronze and wine red tints.

Before the house was an oblong garden into which the lane gate, where the girls were standing, opened.

The house bounded it on one side.

On the three others it was enclosed by an old stone d***, so overgrown with moss and grass and ferns that it looked like a high green bank.

On the right and left, the tall dark spruces spread their palm like branches over it, but below it was a little meadow, green with clover aftermath sloping down the blue loop of the Grafton River.

No other house or clearing was in sight, nothing but hills and valleys covered with feathery young FIRs.

I wonder what sort of a person Miss Lewis is, speculated Diana as they opened the gate into the garden.

They say she is very peculiar.

She'll be interesting then, said Anne.

Decidedly peculiar.

People are always that, at least whatever else they are or are not.

Didn't I tell you we would come to an enchanted palace?

I knew the elves hadn't woven magic over that lane for nothing.

But Miss Lavender Louis is hardly a spellbound.

Princess laughed, Diana.

She's an old maid.

She's 45 and quite gray, I've heard.

Oh, that's only part of the spell, asserted Anne confidently.

At heart, she's young and beautiful still, and if we only knew how to unleash the spell, she would step forth radiant and fair again.

But we don't know how.

It's always and only the prince who knows that.

And Miss Lavender's Prince hasn't come yet.

Perhaps some fatal mischance has befallen him, though that's against the law of all fairy tales.

I'm afraid he came long ago and went away, said Diana.

They used to say she'd be engaged to Stephen Irving, Paul's father, when they were young, but they quarrelled and parted.

Hush, warned Anne.

The door is open.

Girls paused in the porch under the tendrils of ivy and knocked at the open door.

There was a pattern of steps inside, and a rather odd little personage presented herself a girl of about 14, with a freckled face, a snubbed nose, a mouth so wide that it did really seem as if it stretched from ear to ear, and two long braids of fair hair tied with enormous bows of blue ribbon.

Is Ms.

Lewis at home?

Asked Diana.

Yes, ma'am.

Come in, ma'am.

I'll tell Miss Lavender you're here, ma'am.

She's upstairs, ma'am.

With this small handmaiden whisked out of sight, and the girls, left alone, looked about them with delighted eyes.

The interior of this wonderful little house was quite as interesting as its exterior.

The room had a low ceiling and two square smallpaint windows curtained with muslin frills.

All the furnishings were oldfashioned, but so well and daintily kept that the effect was delicious.

But it must be candidly admitted that the most attractive feature to two healthy girls who had just tramped 4 miles through autumn air was a table set out with pale blue china and laden with delicacies.

A little golden hued fern scattered over the cloth gave it what Anne would have termed a festal air.

Miss Lavender must be expecting company to tea, she whispered.

There are six places set.

But what a funny little girl she has.

She looked like a messenger from Pixieland.

I suppose she could have told us the road, but I was curious to see Ms.

Lavender.

She's coming.

And with that, Miss Lavender Louis was standing in the doorway.

The girls were so surprised that they forgot good manners and simply stared.

They had unconsciously been expecting to see the usual type of elderly Spencer as known to their experience, a rather angular personage with prim gray hair and spectacles.

Nothing more unlike Miss Lavender could possibly be imagined.

She was a little lady with snow white hair, beautifully wavy and thick and carefully arranged in becoming puffs and coils.

Beneath it was an almost girlish face, pink cheeked and sweet lipped, with big, soft brown eyes, and dimples, actually dimples.

She wore a very dainty gown of cream muslin with pale hued roses on it, a gown which would have seemed ridiculously juvenile on most women of her age, but which suited Miss Lavender so perfectly that you never thought about it at all.

Charlotte IV says you wish to see me, she said in a voice that matched her appearance.

We wanted to ask the right road to West Grafton, said Diana.

We are invited to tea at Mr.

Kimballs, but we took the wrong path coming through the woods and came out to the baseline.

Instead of the West Grafton road, do we take the right or left?

Turning at your gate?

The left, said Miss Lavender with a hesitating glance at her tea table.

Then she exclaimed, as if in a sudden little burst of resolution, but, oh, won't you stay and have tea with me?

Please do, Mr.

Kimballs.

Will have tea over before you get there in Charlotte IV and I will be so glad to have you.

Diana looked mute inquiry at Anne.

We'd like to stay, said Anne promptly, for she had made up her mind that she wanted to know more of the surprising Ms.

Lavender, if it won't inconvenience you.

But you are expecting other guests, aren't you?

Miss Lavender looked at her tea table again and blushed.

I know you'll think me dreadfully foolish, she said.

I am foolish and I'm ashamed of it when I'm found out.

But never, unless I am found out, I'm not expecting anybody.

I was just pretending I was, you see, I was so lonely.

I love company.

That is, the right kind of company.

But so few people ever come here because it is so far out of the way.

Charlotte IV was lonely too, so I just pretended I was going to have a tea party.

I cooked for it and decorated the table for it and set it with my mother's wedding china.

And I dressed up for it.

Diana secretly thought Miss Lavender quite as peculiar as report had pictured her.

The idea of a woman of 45 playing at having a tea party just as if she were a little girl.

But Anne of the Shining Eyes exclaimed joyfully, oh, do you imagine things too, that too revealed a kindred spirit to Miss Lavender?

Yes, I do, she confessed boldly.

Of course it's silly, and anybody as old as I am.

But what is the use of being an independent old mate if you can't be silly when you want to and when it doesn't hurt anybody?

A person must have some compensation.

I don't believe I could live at times if I didn't pretend things.

I'm not often caught at it, though in Charlotte of the Fourth never tells.

But I'm glad to be caught today, for you have really come and I have tea already for you.

Will you go up to the spare room and take off your hats?

It's the white door at the head of the stairs.

I must run out to the kitchen and see that Charlotte V isn't letting the tea boil.

Charlotte V is a very good girl, but she will let the tea boil.

Miss Lavender tripped off to the kitchen on hospitable thoughts in tent, and the girls found their way up to the spare room.

An apartment as wide as its door, lighted by the ivy hung dormer window and looking, as Anne said, like the place where happy dreams grew.

This is quite an adventure, isn't it?

Said Diana.

And isn't Miss Lavender sweet, if she is a little odd?

She doesn't look a bit like an old maid.

She looks just as music sounds, I think, answered Anne.

When they went down.

Miss Lavender was carrying in the teapot, and behind her, looking vastly pleased, was Charlotte IV with a plate of hot biscuits.

Now you must tell me your names, said Miss Lavender.

I'm so glad you are young girls.

I love young girls.

It's so easy to pretend I'm a girl myself when I'm with them.

I do hate with a little grimace to believe I'm old.

Now, who are you?

Just for convenience's sake?

Diana Barry and Anne Shirley.

May I pretend that I've known you for 100 years and call you Anne and Diana right away?

You may, the girl said.

Both together.

Then just let sit comfy down and eat everything, said Miss Lavender happily.

Charlotte, you sit at the foot and help with the chicken.

It is so fortunate that I made the sponge cake and donuts.

Of course, it was foolish to do for imaginary guests.

I know.

Charlotte.

The four thought so.

Didn't you, Charlotte?

But you see how well it has turned out.

Of course, they wouldn't have been wasted for Charlotte IV and I could have eaten them through time.

But sponge cake is not a thing that improves with time.

There was a merry and memorable meal, and when it was over, they all went out to the garden, lying in the glimmer of sunset.

I do think you have the loveliest place here, said Diana, looking around her admiringly.

Why do you call it Echo Lodge?

Asked Anne.

Charlotte, said Ms.

Lavender, go into the house and bring out the little tin horn that is hanging over the clock shelf.

Charlotte IV skipped off and returned with the horn.

Blow it, Charlotte.

Commanded Miss Lavender.

Charlotte, accordingly, blew a rather ruckus strident.

Blast.

There was a moment stillness, and then from the woods over the river came a multitude of fairy echoes.

Sweet, elusive, silvery, as if all the horns of Elfland were blowing against the sunset.

Anne and Diana exclaimed in delight, now laugh, Charlotte.

Laugh loudly.

Charlotte, who would probably have obeyed if Ms.

Lavender had told her to stand on her head, climbed upon the stone bench and laughed loud and heartily.

Back came the echoes, as if a host of pixie people were mimicking her laughter in the purple woodlands and along the fur fringed points.

People always admire my echoes very much, said Miss Lavender, as if the echoes were her personal property.

I love them myself.

They are very good company.

With a little pretending on calm evening, charlotte IV and I often sit out here and amuse ourselves with them.

Charlotte, take back the horn and hang it carefully in its place.

Why do you call her Charlotte the fourth?

Asked Diana, who was bursting with curiosity on this point.

Just to keep her from getting mixed up with other Charlottes and my thoughts, said Ms.

Lavender.

Seriously, they all look so much alike.

There's no telling them apart.

Her name isn't really Charlotte at all.

It is.

Let me see.

What is it?

I think it's Leonora.

Yes, it is Leonora.

You see, it is this way.

When mother died ten years ago, I couldn't stay here alone and I couldn't afford to pay the wages of a grownup girl, so I got little Charlotte Bowman to come and stay with me for board and clothes.

Her name really was Charlotte.

She was Charlotte.

I was just 13.

She stayed with me till she was 16, and then she went away to Boston because she could do better there.

Her sister came to stay with me then.

Her name was Julietta.

Mrs.

Bowman had a weakness for fancy names, I think.

But she looked so like Charlotte that I kept calling her that all the time, and she didn't mind.

So I just gave up trying to remember her right name.

She was Charlotte II, and when she went away, evelina came, and she was Charlotte III.

Now I have Charlotte IV, but when she is 16, she's 14 now she will want to go to Boston, too.

And what shall I do then?

I really do not know.

Charlotte IV is the last of the Bowman girls and the best.

The other Charlottes always let me see that.

They thought it silly of me to pretend things, but Charlotte IV never does, no matter what she may really think.

I don't care what people think about me if they don't let me see it.

Well, said Diana, looking regretfully at the setting sun.

I supposedly must go if we want to get to Mr.

Kimball's before dark.

We've had a lovely time, Miss Lewis.

Won't you come again to see me?

Pleaded Miss Lavender.

Tall Anne put her arm around the little lady.

Indeed we shall, she promised.

Now that we have discovered you, we'll wear out our welcome coming to see you.

Yes, we must go.

We must tear ourselves away.

As Paul Irving says every time he comes to Green Gables.

Paul Irving?

There was a subtle change in Miss Lavender's voice.

Who is he?

I didn't think there was anybody of that name in Avon.

Lee Anne felt vexed at her own heedlessness.

She had forgotten about Ms.

Lavender's old romance when Paul's name slipped out.

He is a little pupil of mine, she explained slowly.

He came from Boston last year to live with his grandmother, Mrs.

Irving of the Shore Road.

Is he?

Stephen Irving's son.

Miss Lavender asked, bending over her namesake border so that her face was hidden.

Yes.

I'm going to give you girls a bunch of lavender apiece, said Miss Lavender brightly, as if she had not heard the answer to her question.

It is very sweet, don't you think?

Mother always loved it.

She planted these borders long ago.

Father named me Lavender because he was so fond of it.

The very first time he saw mother was when he visited her home in East Grafton with her brother.

He fell in love with her at first sight, and they put him in the spare room bed to sleep, and the sheets were scented with lavender, and he lay awake all night and thought of her.

He always loved the scent of lavender after that, and that was why he gave me the name.

Don't forget to come back soon, girls, dear.

We'll be looking for you, Charlotte IV and I.

She opened the gate under the furs for them to pass through.

She looked suddenly old and tired.

The glow and radiance had faded from her face.

Her parting smile was as sweet with eradicable youth as ever.

But when the girls looked back from the first curve in the lane, they saw her sitting on the old stone bench under the silver poplar in the middle of the garden with her head leaning wearily on her hand.

She does look lonely, said Diana softly.

We must come often to see her.

I think her parents gave her the only right and fitting name that could possibly be given her, said Anne.

If they had been so blind as to name her Elizabeth or Nellie or Muriel, she must have been called Lavender.

Just the same.

I think it's so suggestive of sweetness and old fashioned graces and silk attire.

Now my name just smacks of bread and butter, patchwork and chores.

Oh, I don't think so, said Diana.

Anne seems to me real stately and like a queen, but I'd like Karen Hatch, if it happens to be your name.

I think people make their names nice or ugly just by what they are themselves.

I can't bear Josie or Gertie for names now, but before I knew the Pie girls, I thought them real pretty.

That's a lovely idea, Diana, said Anne enthusiastically, living so that you beautify your name even if it wasn't beautiful to begin with.

Making it stand in people's thoughts for something so lovely and pleasant that they never think of it by themselves.

Thank you, Diana.

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