e 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