A short time later, Olivia and Sarah go to Green Gables to interview Rachel about her years as the church organist/choir director for an article in the Avonlea Chronicle. Rachel insists on putting her corset on for the picture but has trouble getting into it and calls Marilla to help. Marilla tells Olivia and Sarah that while they're waiting they can go through a box in the closet containing a bunch of old choir memorabilia. In it, they find a framed picture of a Rev. Ambrose Dimsdale with a lock of hair hidden behind the picture. Checking out some fliers also in the box, they find that he was the director of a travelling choir that had once visited Avonlea. Intrigued by the framed picture and lock of hair, after their photoshoot Sarah asks Rachel about them. To their surprise, Rachel becomes agitated and angry, saying that they had no right to pry and that the interview is over. Bewildered, Sarah and Olivia tell Hetty what happened when they get back to Rose Cottage and she impishly encourages them to look into the matter. Meanwhile back at Green Gables, Rachel is bemoaning what could have been. It turns out that she had a whirlwind romance with the Rev. Dimsdale while he was in Avonlea back in the day. He asked Rachel to marry him, but Marilla talked her out of it and encouraged her to accept Thomas Lynde's proposal. Rachel now says that Marilla separated her from her one true love, blighting her life. Having none of it, Marilla tells Rachel not to be ridiculous: Rachel knows perfectly well that she had a happy marriage with her late husband Thomas who, Marilla reminds her, worshipped the ground she walked upon. But Rachel is not to be reasoned with, dramatically insisting that her life was ruined because she didn't follow her heart.
There is a pig at Green Gables which keeps escaping from his pen and wandering about, much to Rachel's annoyance; she complains that he is always in the way and underfoot. Davy, who has been pondering how to get Mrs. Lynde to like him, decides that, if he could get rid of the pig, Rachel would look upon him with approval. Earlier that day he had been watching Marilla hang the wash on the line. Seeing Rachel's corset, Davy asked curiously what it was and Marilla replied drily that it was a magic garment which made fat disappear. Remembering this, Davy figures that, if he puts the corset on the pig, it will disappear and Mrs. Lynde will be happy. He manages to corner the pig in the barn and wrestle it into the corset, at which point the traumatized pig escapes his grasp and goes running off, much to the horror of Sarah who emerges from the house to find chaos erupting. Worse, the pig makes a beeline for Avonlea, running squealing through the center of town, clad in Rachel's corset, with Sarah, Davy, and Dora in hot pursuit.