rs told John Andrew
to tell his father to get 147. John Andrew always averred that he did
so, but Mr. Roger Pye as stanchly declared that John Andrew told him
157; and there the matter stands to this day.

That night there was blank dismay in every Avonlea house where an
Improver lived. The gloom at Green Gables was so intense that it
quenched even Davy. Anne wept and would not be comforted.

"I must cry, even if I am almost seventeen, Marilla," she sobbed. "It
is so mortifying. And it sounds the death knell of our society. We'll
simply be laughed out of existence."

In life, as in dreams, however, things often go by contraries. The
Avonlea people did not laugh; they were too angry. Their money had
gone to paint the hall and consequently they felt themselves bitterly
aggrieved by the mistake. Public indignation centered on the Pyes. Roger
Pye and John Andrew had bungled the matter between them; and as for
Joshua Pye, he must be a born fool not to suspect there was something
wrong when he opened the cans and saw the color of the paint. Joshua
Pye, when thus animadverted upon, retorted that the Avonlea taste in
colors was no business of his, whatever his private opinion might be; he
had been hired to paint the hall, not to talk about it; and he meant to
have his money for it.

The Improvers paid him his money in bitterness of spirit, after
consulting Mr. Peter Sloane, who was a magistrate.

"You'll have to pay it," Peter told him. "You can't hold him responsible
for the mistake, since he claims he was never told what the color was
supposed to be but just given the cans and told to go ahead. But it's a
burning shame and that hall certainly does look awful."

The luckless Improvers expected that Avonlea would be more prejudiced
than ever against them; but instead, public sympathy veered around in
their favor. People thought the eager, enthusiastic little band who had
worked so hard for their object had been badly used. Mrs. Lynde told
them to keep on and show the Pyes that there really were people in the
world who could do things without making a muddle of them. Mr. Major
Spencer sent them word that he would clean out all the stumps along the
road front of his farm and seed it down with grass at his own expense;
and Mrs. Hiram Sloane called at the school one day and beckoned Anne
mysteriously out into the porch to tell her that if the "Sassiety"
wanted to make a geranium bed at the crossroads in the spring they
needn