Anne of Avonlea
accidents can’t matter so much, can they?”
“Where’s Davy?” said Marilla, with an indifferent glance at the star.
“In bed. I’ve promised to take him and Dora to the shore for a picnic
tomorrow. Of course, the original agreement was that he must be good.
But he _tried_ to be good . . . and I hadn’t the heart to disappoint
him.”
“You’ll drown yourself or the twins, rowing about the pond in that
flat,” grumbled Marilla. “I’ve lived here for sixty years and I’ve
never been on the pond yet.”
“Well, it’s never too late to mend,” said Anne roguishly. “Suppose you
come with us tomorrow. We’ll shut Green Gables up and spend the whole
day at the shore, daffing the world aside.”
“No, thank you,” said Marilla, with indignant emphasis. “I’d be a nice
sight, wouldn’t I, rowing down the pond in a flat? I think I hear
Rachel pronouncing on it. There’s Mr. Harrison driving away somewhere.
Do you suppose there is any truth in the gossip that Mr. Harrison is
going to see Isabella Andrews?”
“No, I’m sure there isn’t. He just called there one evening on business
with Mr. Harmon Andrews and Mrs. Lynde saw him and said she knew he was
courting because he had a white collar on. I don’t believe Mr. Harrison
will ever marry. He seems to have a prejudice against marriage.”
“Well, you can never tell about those old bachelors. And if he had a
white collar on I’d agree with Rachel that it looks suspicious, for I’m
sure he never was seen with one before.”
“I think he only put it on because he wanted to conclude a business
deal with Harmon Andrews,” said Anne. “I’ve heard him say that’s the
only time a man needs to be particular about his appearance, because if
he looks prosperous the party of the second part won’t be so likely to
try to cheat him. I really feel sorry for Mr. Harrison; I don’t believe
he feels satisfied with his life. It must be very lonely to have no one
to care about except a parrot, don’t you think? But I notice Mr.
Harrison doesn’t like to be pitied. Nobody does, I imagine.”
“There’s Gilbert coming up the lane,” said Marilla. “If he wants you to
go for a row on the pond mind you put on your coat and rubbers. There’s
a heavy dew tonight.”
XVIII
An Adventure on the Tory Road
“Anne,” said Davy, sitting up in bed and propping his chin on his
hands, “Anne, where is sleep? People go to sleep every night, and of
course I know it’s the place where I do the things I dream, but I want
to know _where_ it is and how I get there and back without knowing
anything about it . . . and in my nighty too. Where is it?”
Anne was kneeling at the west gable window watching the sunset sky that
was like a great flower with petals of crocus and a heart of fiery
yellow. She turned her head at Davy’s question and answered dreamily,
“‘Over the mountains of the moon,
Down the valley of the shadow.’”
Paul Irving would have known the meaning of this, or made a meaning out
of it for himself, if he didn’t; but practical Davy, who, as Anne often
despairingly remarked, hadn’t a particle of imagination, was only
puzzled and disgusted.
“Anne, I believe you’re just talking nonsense.”
“Of course, I was, dear boy. Don’t you know that it is only very
foolish folk who talk sense all the time?”
“Well, I think you might give a sensible answer when I ask a sensible
question,” said Davy in an injured tone.
“Oh, you are too little to understand,” said Anne. But she felt rather
ashamed of saying it; for had she not, in keen remembrance of many
similar snubs administered in her own early years, solemnly vowed that
she would never tell any child it was too little to understand? Yet
here she was doing it . . . so wide sometimes is 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 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 laths, 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.
“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.
Anne shook her head hopelessly.
“No . . . the splinters hurt too badly. If you can find an axe you
might chop me out, though. Oh dear, I do really begin to believe that I
_was_ born under an ill-omened star.”
Diana searched faithfully but no axe was to be found.
“I’ll have to go for help,” she said, returning to the prisoner.
“No, indeed, you won’t,” said Anne vehemently. “If you do the story of