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 Josephin