Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the nineteenth chapter of Anne's House of Dreams.

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.

Check out our website, or join our Facebook Group!

Get exclusive Behind the Scenes content on our YouTube!

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

Read more stories online from Mirror online the book and let's see what we can find.

Take it chapter by chapter, one bite at a time so many adventures and mountains we can climb.

Take it word for wordline by line.

One bite 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 want to know what's coming next and vote on upcoming books, sign up for our newsletter at bite atetimebooks.com.

Be sure to follow my show on your favorite podcast platform so you get all the new episodes.

You can find most of our links in the show notes, but also our website, Bite Atetimebooks.com includes all of the links for our show, including to our patreon to support the show, and YouTube, where we have special behind the narration of the episodes.

We're part of the bite at a Time books Productions network.

If you'd also like to hear what inspired your favorite classic author to write their novels and what was going on in the world at the time, check out the Bite at a Time Books Behind the Story podcast.

Wherever you listen to podcasts.

Today we'll be continuing Anne's House of Dreams by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

Chapter 19.

Dawn and dusk in early June, when the sandhills were a great glory of pink wild roses and the glyn was smothered in apple blossoms, marla arrived at the little house, accompanied by a black horse hair trunk patterned with brass nails, which had reposed undisturbed in the green gable's.

Garrett.

For half a century, Susan Baker, who during her few weeks so GERN in the little house, had come to worship young Mrs.

Doctor, as she called Anne with blind fervor, looked rather jealously.

A scance at Marilla at first, but as Marilla did not try to interfere in kitchen matters and showed no desire to interrupt Susan's ministrations to young Mrs.

Doctor, the good handmaiden became reconciled to her presence and told her cronies at the glynn that Miss Cuthbert was a fine old lady and knew her place.

One evening, when the sky's limpid bowl was filled with a red glory and the robins were thrilling the golden twilight with jubilant hymns to the stars of evening, there was a sudden commotion in the Little House of Dreams.

Telephone messages were sent up to the glen.

Dr.

Dave and a white capped nurse came hastily down.

Marilla paced the garden walks between the quahog shells, murmuring prayers between her set lips, and Susan sat in the kitchen with cotton wool in her ears and her apron over her head.

Leslie, looking out from the house up the brook, saw that every window of the little house was alight and did not sleep that night.

The June night was short, but it seemed an eternity to those who waited and watched.

Oh, will it never end?

Said Marilla.

Then she saw how grave the nurse and Dr.

Dave looked and she dared ask no more questions.

Suppose Anne.

But Marilla could not suppose it.

Do not tell me, said Susan fiercely, answering the anguish in Marilla's eyes, that.

God could be so cruel as to take that darling lamb from us when.

We all love her so much.

He has taken others as well.

Beloved, said Marilla hoarsely.

But at dawn, when the rising sun ran apart the mists hanging over the sandbar and made rainbows of them, joy came to the little house.

Anne was safe, and a wee white lady with her mother's big eyes was lying beside her.

Gilbert, his face gray and haggard from his night's agony, came down to tell Marilla and Susan.

Thank God.

Shuddered Marilla.

Susan got up and took the cotton wool out of her ears.

Now for breakfast, she said briskly, I'm.

Of the opinion that we will all be glad of a bite and SUP.

You tell young Mrs Doctor not to.

Worry about a single thing.

Susan is at the helm.

You tell her just to think of her baby.

Gilbert smiled rather sadly as he went away.

Anne, her pale face blanched with its baptism of pain, her eyes, aglow with the holy passion of motherhood, did not need to be told to think of her baby.

She thought of nothing else for a few hours.

She tasted of happiness so rare and exquisite that she wondered if the angels in heaven did not envy her.

Little Joyce, she murmured when Marilla came in to see the baby, we planned to call her that if she were a girly.

There were so many we would have liked to name her, for we couldn't choose between them.

So we decided on Joyce.

We can call her Joy for short.

Joy.

It suits so well.

Oh, Marilla, I thought I was happy before.

Now I know that I just dreamed a pleasant dream of happiness.

This is the reality.

You mustn't talk, Anne.

Wait till you're stronger, said Marilla warningly.

You know how hard it is for me not to talk, smiled Anne.

At first she was too weak and too happy to notice that Gilbert and the nurse looked grave and Marilla sorrowful then as subtly and coldly and were mercilessly as a seafog stealing landward, fear crept into her heart.

Why was not Gilbert Gladder?

Why would he not talk about the baby?

Why would they not let her have it with her after that first heavenly happy hour?

Was was there anything wrong, Gilbert?

Whispered Anne imploringly.

The baby is all right, isn't she?

Tell me.

Tell me.

Gilbert was a long while in turning round, and he bent over Anne and looked in her eyes.

Marilla listened fearfully outside the door, heard a pitiful heartbroken moan, and fled to the kitchen, where Susan was sweeping.

Oh, the poor lamb.

The poor lamb.

How can she bear it?

Miss Cuthbert, I'm afraid it will kill her.

She has been that built up and happy longing for that baby and planning for it.

Cannot anything be done know how, Miss Cuthbert?

I'm afraid not, Susan.

Gilbert says there's no hope.

He knew from the first the little thing couldn't live.

And it is such a sweet baby, sobbed Susan.

I never saw one so white.

They're mostly red or yellow.

And it opened its big eyes as if it was months old, the little, little thing.

Oh, the poor young mrs.

Doctor.

At sunset, the little soul that had come with the dawning went away, leaving heartbreak behind it.

Miss Cornelia took the wee white lady from the kindly but stranger hands of the nurse and dressed the tiny waxen form in the beautiful dress Leslie had made for it.

Leslie had asked her to do that.

Then she took it back and laid it beside the poor, broken, tear blinded little mother.

The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away, dearie, she said through her own tears.

Bless it.

Be the name of the Lord.

Then she went away, leaving Anne and Gilbert alone together with their dead.

The next day the small, white Joy was laid in a velvet casket, which Leslie had lined with apple blossoms and taken to the graveyard of the church across the harbor.

Miss Cornelia and Marilla put all the little lovemaid garments away, together with the ruffled basket which had been befrilled and blazed for dimpled limbs and downy head.

Little Joy was never to sleep there.

She had found a colder, narrower bed.

This has been an awful disappointment to.

Me, sighed Miss Cornelia.

I've looked forward to this baby, and I did want it to be a girl, too.

I can only be thankful that Anne's life was spared, said Marilla with a shiver, recalling those hours of darkness when the girl she loved was passing through the valley of the shadow.

Poor, poor lamb.

Her heart is broken, said Susan.

I envy Anne, said Leslie, suddenly and fiercely, and I'd envy her.

Even if she had died, she was a mother for that one beautiful day.

I'll gladly give my life for that.

I wouldn't talk like that, Leslie Deery.

Said Miss Cornelia deprecatingly.

She was afraid that the dignified Miss Cuthbert would think Leslie quite terrible.

Anne's convalescence was long and made bitter for her by many things.

The bloom and sunshine of the Forewind's world graded harshly on her.

And yet, when the rain fell heavily, she pictured it beating so mercilessly down on that little grave across the harbor.

And when the wind blew around the eaves, she heard sad voices in it she had never heard before.

Kindly callers hurt her, too, with the well meant platitudes with which they strove to cover the nakedness of Bereavement.

A letter from Phil Blake was an added sting.

Phil had heard of the baby's birth, but not of its death, and she wrote Anne a congratulatory letter of sweet mirth, which hurt her horribly.

I would have laughed over it so happily, if I had my baby, she sobbed to Marilla.

But when I haven't, it just seems like wanton cruelty.

Though I know Phil wouldn't hurt me for the world.

Oh, Marilla, I don't see how I can ever be happy again.

Everything will hurt me all the rest of my life.

Time will help you, said Marilla, who was racked with sympathy but could never learn to express it in other than age worn formulas.

It doesn't seem fair, said Anne.

Rebelliously babies are born and live where they're not wanted, where they will be neglected, where they will have no chance.

I would have loved my baby so and cared for it so tenderly and tried to give her every chance for good.

And yet I wasn't allowed to keep her.

It was God's will, Anne, said Marilla, helpless before the riddle of the universe, the why of undeserved pain and little joy, is better off.

I can't believe that, cried Anne bitterly.

Then, seeing that Marilla looked shocked, she added passionately, why should she be born at all?

Why should anyone be born at all if she's better off dead?

I don't believe it is better for a child to diet birth than to live its life out and love and be loved and enjoy and suffer and do its work and develop a character that would give it a personality and eternity.

How do you know it was God's will?

Perhaps it was just a thwarting of his purpose.

By the power of evil we can't be expected to be resigned to that.

Oh, Anne, don't talk so, said Marilla, genuinely alarmed lest Anne were drifting into deep and dangerous waters.

We can't understand, but we must have faith.

We must believe that all is for the best.

I know you find it hard to think so just now, but try to be brave for Gilbert's sake.

He's so worried about you.

You aren't getting strong as fast as you should.

Oh, I know I've been very selfish, sighed Anne.

I love Gilbert more than ever and I want to live for his sake.

But it seems as if part of me was buried over there in that little harbor graveyard.

And it hurts so much that I'm afraid of life.

It won't hurt so much always, Anne.

The thought that it may stop hurting sometimes hurts me worse than all else, Marilla.

Yes, I know.

I felt that too, about other things.

But we all love you, Anne.

Captain Jim has been up every day to ask for you, and Mrs.

Moore haunts the place and Miss Bryant spends most of her time, I think, hooking up nice things for you.

Susan doesn't like it very well.

She thinks she can cook as well as Miss Bryant.

Dear Susan.

Oh, everybody has been so dear and good and lovely to me, Marilla.

I'm not ungrateful.

And perhaps when this horrible ache grows a little less, I'll find that I can go on living.

Thank you for joining Bite at a Time books today while we read a bite of one of your favorite classics.

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

Don't forget to sign up for our newsletter@biteedtimebooks.com.

You can check out the show notes or our website byteedimebooks.com for the rest of the links for our show.

Take a look and I broke and let's see what we can find.

Take it chapter by chapter, one by time so many adventures and mountains we can climb.