Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the eighth chapter of Rainbow Valley.

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Today we'll be continuing Rainbow Valley by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

Chapter Eight ms.

Cornelia Intervenes miss Cornelia descended upon the mance the next day and cross questioned Mary, who, being a young person of considerable discernment and astuteness, told her story simple and truthfully, with an entire absence of complaint or bravado.

Miss Cornelia was more favorably impressed than she had expected to be, but deemed it her duty to be severe.

Do you think, she said sternly, that.

You showed your gratitude to this family, who has been far too kind to you by insulting and chasing one of their little friends, as you did yesterday?

Say it was rotten mean of me, admitted Mary easily.

I don't know what possessed me.

That old codfish seemed to come in so blamed handy.

But I was awful sorry I cried last night after I went to bed about it.

Honest I did.

You ask una if I didn't.

I wouldn't tell her what for, because I was ashamed of it.

And then she cried, too, because she was afraid someone had hurt my feelings.

Loz, I ain't got any feelings to hurt.

We're speaking of what worries me is why Mrs.

Wiley ain't been hunting for me.

It ain't like her.

Miss Cornelia herself thought it rather peculiar, but she merely admonished Mary sharply not.

To take any further liberties with the.

Minister'S codfish and went to report progress at Ingleside.

If the child's story is true, the.

Matter ought to be looked into, she said.

I know something about that Wily woman, believe me.

Marshall used to be well acquainted with her when he lived over harbor.

I heard him say something last summer about her and a Homechild she had, likely this very merry creature.

He said someone told him she was working the child to death and not half feeding and clothing it.

You know, Anne Deery it has always been my habit neither to make nor meddle with those over harbor folks.

But I shall send the Marshall over tomorrow to find out the rights of this, if he can, and then I'll.

Speak to the minister.

Mind you, Anne deary, the Meredith found this girl literally starving in James Taylor's old hay barn.

She'd been there all night, cold and hungry and alone.

And us sleeping warm in our beds after good suppers.

The poor little thing, said Anne, picturing one of her own dear babies, cold and hungry and alone in such circumstances.

If she has been ill used, Miss Cornelia, she mustn't be taken back to such a place.

I was an orphan once in a very similar situation.

We'll have to consult the Hope Town asylum folks, said Miss Cornelia.

Anyway, she can't be left at the man's.

Deer knows what those poor children might learn from her.

I understand that she's been known to swear, but just think of her being there two whole weeks and Mr.

Meredith never waking up to it.

What business has a man like that to have a family?

Why, Anne deary, he ought to be a monk.

Two evenings later, Miss Cornelia was back at Ingleside.

It's the most amazing thing, she said.

Mrs.

Wiley was found dead in her bed the very morning after this merry creature ran away.

She's had a bad heart for years, and the doctor had warned her it might happen at any time.

She'd sent away her hired man and there was nobody in the house.

Some neighbors found her the next day.

They missed the child, it seems, but supposed Mrs.

Wiley had sent her to her cousin near Charlottetown, as she had said she was going to do.

The cousin didn't come to the funeral, and so nobody ever knew that Mary wasn't with her.

The people Marshall talked to told him some things about the way Mrs.

Wiley used this Mary that made his blood boil.

So he declares.

You know, it puts Marshall in a regular fury to hear of a child being ill used.

They said she whipped her mercilessly for every little fault or mistake.

Some folks talked of writing to the asylum authorities, but everybody's business is nobody's business, and it was never done.

I'm sorry that Wily person is dead, said Susan fiercely.

I should like to go over harbor and give her a piece of my mind.

Starving and beating a child, mrs.

Dr.

Dear, as you know, I hold with lawful spanking, but I go no further.

And what is to become of this poor child now, missus Marshall Elliot?

I suppose she must be sent back.

To Hopetown, said Miss Cornelia.

I think everyone hereabouts who wants a home child has one.

I'll see Mister Meredith tomorrow and tell him my opinion of the whole affair.

And no doubt she will mrs.

Dr.

Dear said Susan.

After Miss Cornelia had gone.

She would stick at nothing, not even at Shingling, the church spire, if she took it into her head.

But I cannot understand how even Cornelia.

Bryant can talk to a minister as she does.

You would think he was just any common person.

When Miss Cornelia had gone, NAN Blythe uncurled herself from the hammock where she'd been studying her lessons and slipped away to Rainbow Valley.

The others were already there.

JeM and Jerry were playing quite with the old horseshoes borrowed from the Glenn blacksmith.

Carl was stalking ants on a sunny hillock.

Walter, lying on his stomach among the fern, was reading aloud to marry and die in faith and una from a wonderful book of myths wherein were fascinating accounts of Prester.

John and the wandering Jew divining rods and taled men of shamer, the worm.

That split rocks and opens the way.

To golden treasure of fortunate isles and swan maidens.

It was a great shock to Walter to learn that William Tell and Gellard were myths also, and the story of Bishop Hadtow was to keep him awake all that night.

But best of all, he loved the.

Stories of the Pied Piper and the sand greall.

He read them thrillingly while the bells.

On the tree lovers tinkled in the.

Summer wind, and the coolness of the evening shadows crept across the valley.

Say, ain't them interesting lies?

Said Mary admiringly when Walter had closed the book.

They aren't lies, said Die indignantly.

You don't mean they're true?

Asked Mary incredulously.

No, not exactly.

They're like those ghost stories of yours.

They weren't true, but you didn't expect us to believe them, so they weren't lies.

That yarn about the divining rod is no lie anyhow, said Mary, old Jake Crawford over harbor can work it.

They send for him from everywhere when they want to dig a well.

And I believe I know the wandering Jew.

Oh, Mary, said una ostruck, I do truth.

You're alive.

There was an old man at Mrs.

Wiley's one day last fall.

He looked old enough to be anything.

She was asking him about cedar posts, if he thought they last well.

And he said last well?

The last 1000 years.

I know, for I've tried them twice now.

If he was 2000 years old, who was he but your Wandering Jew?

I don't believe the Wandering Jew would associate with a person like Mrs.

Wiley, said Faith.

Decidedly.

I love the Pied Piper story said die.

And so does Mother.

I always feel so sorry for the.

Poor little lame boy who couldn't keep.

Up with the others and got shut out of the mountain.

He must have been so disappointed.

I think all the rest of his life he'd been wondering what wonderful thing he had missed and wished he could have gone with the others.

But how glad his mother must have been, said Una softly.

I think she'd been sorry all her.

Life that he was lame.

Perhaps she even used to cry about it.

But she would never be sorry again.

Never.

She would be glad he was lame.

Because that was why she hadn't lost him.

Someday, said Walter dreamily, looking afar into the sky, the Pied Piper will come.

Over the hill, up there and down.

Rainbow Valley, piping merrily and sweetly.

And I will follow him, follow him down to the shore, down to the.

Sea, away from you all.

I don't think I'll want to go.

Jim will want to go.

It'll be such an adventure.

But I won't.

Only I'll have to.

The music will call and call and call me until I must follow.

We'll all go.

Cried Die, catching fire at the flame of Walter's fancy and half believing she could see the mocking, retreating figure of the mystic piper in the far dim end of the valley.

No, you'll sit here and wait, said Walter, his great splendid eyes full of strange glamour.

You'll wait for us to come back, and we may not come, for we cannot come as long as the piper plays.

He may pipe us round the world.

And still you'll sit here and wait and wait.

Oh, dry up, said Mary, shivering.

Don't look like that, Walter Blive.

You give me the creeves.

Do you want to set me bawling?

I could just see that horrid old piper going away on, and you boys following him.

And thus girls sitting here waiting all alone.

I don't know why it is.

I never was one of the blubbering kind.

But as soon as you start your spieling, I always want to cry.

Walter smiled in triumph.

He liked to exercise this power of his over his companions, to play on their feelings, waken their fears, thrill their souls.

It satisfied some dramatic instinct in him.

But under his triumph was a queer little chill of some mysterious dread.

The Pied Piper had seemed very real to him, as if the fluttering veil.

That hid the future had for a.

Moment been blown aside in the starlet dusk of Rainbow Valley and some dim glimpse of coming years granted to him.

Carl, coming up to their group with.

A report of the doings in Ant.

Land brought them all back to the realm of facts.

Ants are darned interesting.

Exclaimed Mary, glad to escape the shadowy piper's thrall.

Carl and me watched that bed in the graveyard all Saturday afternoon.

I never thought there was so much in Bugs say.

But they're quarrelsome little cusses.

Some of them like to start a fight without any reason, far as we could see.

And some of them are cowards.

They got so scared, they just doubled theirselves up into a ball and let the other fellows bang them.

They wouldn't put up a fight at all.

Some of them are lazy and won't work.

We watched them shirking.

And there was one aunt died of grief because another aunt got killed.

Wouldn't work, wouldn't eat, just died.

It did, honest to goodness.

A shocked silence prevailed.

Everyone knew that Mary had not started out to say goodness, faith, and Die exchanged glances that would have done credit to Miss Cornelia herself.

Walter and Carl looked uncomfortable, and Una's lip trembled.

Mary squirmed uncomfortably.

That slipped out, for I thought it did.

Honest to I mean truth.

You live, and I swallowed half of it.

You folks over here a mighty squeamish.

Seems to me.

Wish you could have heard the Wileys when they had a fight.

Ladies don't say such things, said Faith.

Very primly for her.

It isn't right whispered una I ain't a lady, said Mary.

What chance have I ever had of being a lady?

But I won't say that again if I can help it, I promise you.

Besides, said Una, you can't expect God.

To answer your prayers if you take.

His name in vain, Mary.

I don't expect him to answer him anyhow, said Mary of little Faith.

I've been asking him for a week to clear up this Wiley affair, and he hasn't done a thing I'm going to give up at this juncture.

NAN arrived breathless.

Oh, Mary, I've news for you.

Mrs.

Elliot has been over harbor.

And what do you think she found out?

Mrs.

Wiley is dead.

She was found dead in bed the morning after you ran away so you'll never have to go back to her.

Dead?

Said Mary Stupefied.

Then she shivered.

Do you suppose my praying had anything to do with that?

She cried imploringly to Una.

If it had, I'll never pray again as long as I live.

Why, she may come back and haunt me.

No, no, Mary, said Una, comfortingly it hadn't.

Why, Mrs.

Wiley died long before you ever began to pray about it at all.

That's so?

Said Mary, recovering from her panic.

But I tell you, it gave me a start.

I wouldn't like to think I'd prayed anybody to death.

I've never thought of such a thing as her dying when I was praying.

She didn't seem much like the dying kind.

Did Mrs.

Elliot say anything about me?

She said you would likely have to go back to the asylum.

I thought as much, said Mary drearily, and then they'll give me out again, likely to someone just like Mrs.

Wiley.

Oh, I suppose I can stand it.

I'm tough.

I'm going to pray that you won't have to go back, whispered Una as she and Mary walked home to the mance.

You can do as you like, said Mary decidedly, but I vow I won't.

I'm good and scared of this praying business.

See what's come of it.

If Mrs.

Wiley had died after I started praying, it would have been my doings.

Oh, no, it wouldn't, said Una.

I wish I could explain things better.

Father could.

I know if you'd talk to him, Mary.

Catch me.

I don't know what to make of your father.

That's the long and short of it.

He goes by me and never sees me in broad daylight.

I ain't proud, but I ain't a doormat neither.

Oh, Mary.

It's just Father's way most of the time.

He never sees us either.

He's thinking deeply, that is all.

And I am going to pray that.

God will keep you in Four Winds.

Because I like you, Mary.

All right.

Only don't let me hear of any more people dying on account of it said Mary.

I'd like to stay in four winds.

Fine.

I like it.

And I like the harbor and the lighthouse and you and the blives.

You're the only friends I ever had and I'd hate to leave you.

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 Rainbow Valley.

Don't forget to sign up for our newsletter at bite atetimebooks.com and check out the shop.

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Thank you.

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