“Haven’t you heard?” said Jane wrathfully.  “Well, its simply this. . .  Joshua Pye has gone and painted the hall blue instead of green. . . a deep, brilliant blue, the shade they use for painting carts and wheelbarrows.  And Mrs. Lynde says it is the most hideous color for a building, especially when combined with a red roof, that she ever saw or imagined.  You could simply have knocked me down with a feather when I heard it.  It’s heartbreaking, after all the trouble we’ve had.”

“How on earth could such a mistake have happened?” wailed Diana.

The blame of this unmerciful disaster was eventually narrowed down to the Pyes.  The Improvers had decided to use Morton-Harris paints and the Morton-Harris paint cans were numbered according to a color card.  A purchaser chose his shade on the card and ordered by the accompanying number.  Number 147 was the shade of green desired and when Mr. Roger Pye sent word to the Improvers by his son, John Andrew, that he was going to town and would get their paint for them, the Improvers 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.”