Anne and Diana’s search for a replacement platter turns a practical errand into a chain of comic reversals: a promising lead sends them down the Tory Road, a glimpse of the object leaves Anne trapped in a duckhouse roof, and the woman who frees her sells the very platter she came to find. The journey resolves the platter problem while also revealing Sarah Copp’s long-delayed marriage plans.

The Search Begins

The expedition grows out of the need to replace Miss Barry’s willow-ware platter. Diana signals Anne from her window in groups of five, their childhood code for an urgent revelation. She has heard from Mary Sentner, whom she met at Mr. Blair’s store in Carmody, that the Copp sisters on the Tory Road may own a platter just like the one used at the supper. If that lead fails, there may be another at Wesley Keyson’s in Spencervale, though Diana cannot be sure it is the right kind.

Anne decides not to risk the secondhand possibility. She and Diana will go to Spencervale the next day, giving Anne a chance to secure the platter before her planned visit to town and her encounter with Aunt Josephine. The prospect recalls an earlier embarrassing confession about jumping on the spare-room bed, a memory the friends share with laughter. The small domestic object has become a source of genuine anxiety: Anne fears facing Aunt Josephine without a suitable replacement.

The route is ten miles, and the weather makes the trip unpleasant. After six dry weeks, the day is hot and windless, and dust lies thick on the road. Anne feels for the parched fields and trees, as well as for her own garden; she also reports that J. A. Harrison’s scorched pastures leave his cattle with little to eat. The errand thus unfolds against a landscape already strained by drought. Once they reach Spencervale, the girls turn onto the quiet Tory Road, bordered in places by young spruces and broken by farm fields and stretches of stumps bright with fireweed and goldenrod.

The Pantry Window and the Accident

At the Copp house, the sisters are not home, and Anne is unsure whether to wait. Diana identifies a small square window as the pantry window, reasoning from the arrangement of another house she knows. Because the shade is raised, they think they may be able to see whether the platter is inside by climbing onto the roof of a nearby little structure. Anne considers whether this would be improper and concludes that their purpose is not idle curiosity.

The structure is an old duckhouse, built of lathes with a peaked roof. The Copp sisters no longer keep ducks because they found them untidy; in later years the little building has served as a place to confine setting hens. Though whitewashed, it is shaky. Anne climbs from a keg placed on a box and gingerly steps onto the roof, leaning on the pantry windowsill for support. Through the glass she sees exactly the willow-ware platter they are seeking. In her delight, she forgets how precarious her footing is, hops impulsively, and crashes through the roof, stuck up to her armpits.

Diana tries to pull Anne free, but splinters make the effort painful. A keg gives Anne somewhere to rest her feet, yet she remains trapped, and Diana cannot find an axe. Anne refuses to let her fetch help immediately: she fears the story will spread and insists they wait for the Copp sisters, who can release her and be asked to keep the incident secret. She is willing to pay for the damage, provided the sisters understand why she looked through the pantry window. Her relief that the platter is the right one competes with embarrassment at being lodged in an outhouse roof—a misfortune she regards as ridiculous rather than romantic.

Rescue and Purchase

The predicament worsens when Diana returns from looking around the house with news that a very black cloud is rising rapidly in the northwest. Anne takes the approaching thunderstorm calmly compared with the accident already under way. She tells Diana to move the horse and buggy into an open shed and sends along her parasol and hat. The storm threat sharpens the urgency, but Anne still hopes the Copp sisters will return before outside help becomes necessary.

Sarah Copp arrives and, after hearing Diana’s explanation, responds sympathetically. She unlocks the back door, retrieves an axe, and frees Anne with a few strokes. Anne immediately explains that she looked in only to identify the platter and did not search for anything else. Sarah reassures her: the Copp pantry is kept presentable, and she is glad the old duckhouse has been damaged because she has wanted it taken down. She had been obliged to whitewash it each spring, while Martha had resisted removing it in case it might someday be useful.

Sarah confirms that the platter belongs to her, though she expects Martha may object to a sale made in her absence. After the girls come inside for bread, butter, and cucumbers—the cake, cheese, and preserves have been locked away—Sarah names a price of twenty-five dollars. Diana silently urges Anne to bargain, believing Sarah might accept twenty, but Anne is too anxious to secure the platter to risk losing it. She agrees at once, and Sarah accepts the offer.

Sarah Copp’s Revelation

The sale opens onto a more personal disclosure. Sarah says she needs the money because she is going to marry Luther Wallace. He had wanted to marry her twenty years earlier, and she had cared for him, but he was poor and her father sent him away. Sarah recalls that she was timid and frightened of her father and did not resist; now she reflects that she had not understood how scarce eligible men were. The platter hunt therefore ends not only with the object Anne needs, but with news of a love interrupted by poverty and parental authority and revived after two decades.

The episode’s comic machinery depends on the gap between a simple plan and its consequences: Anne climbs only to look, finds the platter immediately, and is trapped by the very roof that gives her the view. Her practical concern for the object persists through the humiliation and the storm threat, while the final bargain brings the errand to a successful close. Sarah’s account gives the purchase an unexpected human coda, making the household object the occasion for a story of lost time, constrained choice, and a marriage still possible.