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the gulf between theory and practice.
"Well, I'm doing my best to grow," said Davy, "but it's a thing you can't hurry much. If Marilla wasn't so
stingy with her jam I believe I'd grow a lot faster."
"Marilla is not stingy, Davy," said Anne severely. "It is very ungrateful of you to say such a thing."
"There's another word that means the same thing and sounds a lot better, but I don't just remember it," said
Davy, frowning intently. "I heard Marilla say she was it, herself, the other day."
"If you mean ECONOMICAL, it's a VERY different thing from being stingy. It is an excellent trait in a
person if she is economical. If Marilla had been stingy she wouldn't have taken you and Dora when your
mother died. Would you have liked to live with Mrs. Wiggins?"
"You just bet I wouldn't!" Davy was emphatic on that point. "Nor I don't want to go out to Uncle Richard
neither. I'd far rather live here, even if Marilla is that long-tailed word when it comes to jam, 'cause YOU'RE
here, Anne. Say, Anne, won't you tell me a story 'fore I go to sleep? I don't want a fairy story. They're all right
for girls, I s'pose, but I want something exciting. . .lots of killing and shooting in it, and a house on fire, and
in'trusting things like that."
Fortunately for Anne, Marilla called out at this moment from her room.
"Anne, Diana's signaling at a great rate. You'd better see what she wants."
Anne ran to the east gable and saw flashes of light coming through the twilight from Diana's window in
groups of five, which meant, according to their old childish code, "Come over at once for I have something
important to reveal." Anne threw her white shawl over her head and hastened through the Haunted Wood and
across Mr. Bell's pasture corner to Orchard Slope.
"I've good news for you, Anne," said Diana. "Mother and I have just got home from Carmody, and I saw
Mary Sentner from Spencer vale in Mr. Blair's store. She says the old Copp girls on the Tory Road have a
willow-ware platter and she thinks it's exactly like the one we had at the supper. She says they'll likely sell it,
for Martha Copp has never been known to keep anything she COULD sell; but if they won't there's a platter at
Wesley Keyson's at Spencervale and she knows they'd sell it, but she isn't sure it's just the same kind as Aunt
Josephine's."
"I'll go right over to Spencervale after it tomorrow," said Anne resolutely, "and you must come with me. It
will be such a weight off my mind, for I have to go to town day after tomorrow and how can I face your Aunt
Josephine without a willow-ware platter? It would be even worse than the time I had to confess about
jumping on the spare room bed."
Both girls laughed over the old memory. . .concerning which, if any of my readers are ignorant and curious, I
must refer them to Anne's earlier history.
The next afternoon the girls fared forth on their platter hunting expedition. It was ten miles to Spencervale and
Chapter of 79
the day was not especially pleasant for traveling. It was very warm and windless, and the dust on the road was
such as might have been expected after six weeks of dry weather.
"Oh, I do wish it would rain soon," sighed Anne. "Everything is so parched up. The poor fields just seem
pitiful to me and the trees seem to be stretching out their hands pleading for rain. As for my garden, it hurts
me every time I go into it. I suppose I shouldn't complain about a garden when the farmers' crops are suffering
so. Mr. Harrison says his pastures are so scorched up that his poor cows can hardly get a bite to eat and he
feels guilty of cruelty to animals every time he meets their eyes."
After a wearisome drive the girls reached Spencervale and turned down the "Tory" Road. . .a green, solitary
highway where the strips of grass between the wheel tracks bore evidence to lack of travel. Along most of its
extent it was lined with thick-set young spruces crowding down to the roadway, with here and there a break
where the back field of a Spencervale farm came out to the fence or an expanse of stumps was aflame with
fireweed and goldenrod.
"Why is it called the Tory Road?" asked Anne.
"Mr. Allan says it is on the principle of calling a place a grove because there are no trees in it," said Diana,
"for nobody lives along the road except the Copp girls and old Martin Bovyer at the further end, who is a
Liberal. The Tory government ran the road through when they were in power just to show they were doing
something."
Diana's father was a Liberal, for which reason she and Anne never discussed politics. Green Gables folk had
always been Conservatives.
Finally the girls came to the old Copp homestead. . .a place of such exceeding external neatness that even
Green Gables would have suffered by contrast. The house was a very old-fashioned one, situated on a slope,
which fact had necessitated the building of a stone basement under one end. The house and out-buildings
were all whitewashed to a condition of blinding perfection and not a weed was visible in the prim kitchen
garden surrounded by its white paling.
"The shades are all down," said Diana ruefully. "I believe that nobody is home."
This proved to be the case. The girls looked at each other in perplexity.
"I don't know what to do," said Anne. "If I were sure the platter was the right kind I would not mind waiting
until they came home. But if it isn't it may be too late to go to Wesley Keyson's afterward."
Diana looked at a certain little square window over the basement.
"That is the pantry window, I feel sure," she said, "because this house is just like Uncle Charles' at Newbridge,
and that is their pantry window. The shade isn't down, so if we climbed up on the roof of that little house we
could look into the pantry and might be able to see the platter. Do you think it would be any harm?"
"No, I don't think so," decided Anne, after due reflection, "since our motive is not idle curiosity."
This important point of ethics being settled, Anne prepared to mount the aforesaid "little house," a
construction of lathes, with a peaked roof, which had in times past served as a habitation for ducks. The Copp
girls had given up keeping ducks. . ."because they were such untidy birds". . . and the house had not been in
use for some years, save as an abode of correction for setting hens. Although scrupulously whitewashed it had
become somewhat shaky, and Anne felt rather dubious as she scrambled up from the vantage point of a keg
placed on a box.
Chapter of 80
"I'm afraid it won't bear my weight," she said as she gingerly stepped on the roof.
"Lean on the window sill," advised Diana, and Anne accordingly leaned. Much to her delight, she saw, as she
peered through the pane, a willow-ware platter, exactly such as she was in quest of, on the shelf in front of
the window. So much she saw before the catastrophe came. In her joy Anne forgot the precarious nature of
her footing, incautiously ceased to lean on the window sill, gave an impulsive little hop of pleasure. . .and the
next moment she had crashed through the roof up to her armpits, and there she hung, quite unable to extricate
herself. Diana dashed into the duck house and, seizing her unfortunate friend by the waist, tried to draw her
down.
"Ow. . .don't," shrieked poor Anne. "There are some long splinters sticking into me. See if you can put
something under my feet. . .then perhaps I can draw myself up."
Diana hastily dragged in the previously mentioned keg and Anne found that it was just sufficiently high to
furnish a secure resting place for her feet. But she could not release herself.
"Could I pull you out if I crawled up?" suggested Diana.
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