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 should n'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 XXXXX the prim kitchen garden surrounded by its white paling .
After Along about as by for in over through with