Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the ninth chapter of Anne of Avonlea by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

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Adventures and mountains we can climb.

Take your word for wordline, but line one part at a time.

Welcome to Bite at a Time Books, where we read you your favorite classics one byte at a time.

My name is Brie Carlyle, and I love to read and wanted to share my passion with listeners like you.

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Today we'll be continuing anne of Aven Lee by Lucy Maud Montgomery nine a Question of Color that old nuisance of.

Rachel Lynde was here again today, pestering me for a subscription towards buying a.

Carpet for the Vestry room, said Mr.

Harrison wrathfully.

I detest that woman more than anybody I know.

She can put a whole sermon text, comment and application into six words and throw it at you like a brick.

Anne, who was perched on the edge of the veranda enjoying the charm of a mild west wind blowing across a newly plowed field on a grey November twilight and piping a quaint little melody among the twisted furs below the garden, turned her dreamy face over her shoulder.

The trouble is, you and Mrs.

Lynde don't understand one another, she explained.

That is always what is wrong when people don't like each other.

I didn't like Mrs.

Lynd at first either, but as soon as I came to understand her, I learned to.

Mrs.

Lind may be an acquired taste with some folks, but I didn't keep on eating bananas because I was told I'd learn to like them if I.

Did, growled Mr.

Harrison.

And as for understanding her, I understand that she is a confirmed busy body, and I told her so.

Oh, that must have hurt her feelings very much, said Ann reproachfully.

How could you say such a thing?

I said some dreadful things to Mrs.

Lynde long ago, but it was when I had lost my temper.

I couldn't say them deliberately.

It was the truth.

And I believe in telling the truth to everybody.

But you don't tell the whole truth, objected Anne.

You only tell the disagreeable part of the truth.

Now, you've told me a dozen times that my hair was red, but you've.

Never once told me that I had a nice nose.

I dare say you know it without.

Any telling, chuckled Mr.

Harrison.

I know I have red hair, too, although it's much darker than it used to be, so there's no need of telling me that either.

Well, I'll try and not mention it again since you're so sensitive.

You must excuse me.

Anne.

I've got a habit of being outspoken, and folks mustn't mind it, but they.

Can'T help minding it.

And I don't think it's any help that it's your habit.

What would you think of a person.

Who went about sticking pins and needles into people and saying excuse me?

You mustn't mind it.

It's just a habit I've got.

You'd think he was crazy, wouldn't you?

And as for Mrs.

Lynd being a busy body, perhaps she is, but did you tell her she had a very kind heart and always helped the poor and never said a word?

When Timothy Cotton stole a crock of butter out of her dairy and told his wife he'd bought it from her mrs.

Cotton cast it up to her the next time they met that it tasted of turnups.

And Mrs.

Lynn just said she was sorry it had turned out so poorly.

I suppose she has some good qualities.

Conceded Mr.

Harrison grudgingly.

Most folks have.

I have some myself, though you might never suspect it.

But anyhow, I ain't going to give anything to that carpet.

Folks are everlasting begging for money here.

It seems to me.

How's your project of painting the hall coming on?

Splendidly.

We had a meeting of the Avis last Friday night and found that we had plenty of money subscribed to paint the hall and shingle the roof, too.

Most people gave very liberally, mr.

Harrison.

Anne was a sweet, sold lass but she could instill some venom into innocent italics when occasion required.

What color are you going to have it?

We have decided on a very pretty green.

The roof will be dark red, of course.

Mr.

Roger Pie is going to get the paint in town today.

Who's got the job?

Mr.

Joshua Pi of carmody.

He's nearly finished the shingling.

We had to give him the contract for every one of the Pies.

And therefore families, you know, said they wouldn't give a cent unless Joshua got it.

They had subscribed $12 between them, and we thought that was too much to lose.

Although some people think we shouldn't have given into the Pies.

Mrs.

Lynn says they try to run everything.

The main question is, will this Joshua do his work?

Well, if he does, I don't see that it matters whether his name is Pie or Pudding.

He has the reputation of being a good workman, though they say he's a very peculiar man.

He hardly ever talks.

He is peculiar enough.

All right, then, said Mr.

Harrison dryly.

Or at least folks here will call him so.

I never was much of a talker until I came to Avon Lee and then I had to begin in self defense or Mrs.

Lynd would have said I was dumb and started a subscription to have me taught sign language.

You're not going yet.

Anne I must.

I have some sewing to do for Dora this evening.

Besides, Davy is probably breaking Marilla's heart with some new mischief.

By this time this morning, the first thing he said was Where does the dark go, Anne?

I want to know.

I told him it went around to the other side of the world, but after breakfast he declared it didn't, that it went down the well.

Marilla says she caught him hanging over the well box four times today, trying to reach down to the dark.

He's a limb declared Mr.

Harrison.

He came over here yesterday and pulled six feathers out of Ginger's tail before I could get in from the barn.

The poor bird has been moping ever since.

Those children must be a side of trouble to you folks.

Everything that's worth having is some trouble, said Anne, secretly resolving to forgive Davy's next offense, whatever it might be, since he had avenged her on Ginger.

Mr.

Roger Pi brought the hall paint home that night, and Mr.

Joshua Pi, a surly, tacketern man, began painting the next day.

He was not disturbed in his task.

The hall was situated on what was called the lower road.

In late autumn, this road was always muddy and wet, and people going to Carmody traveled by the longer upper road.

The hall was so closely surrounded by fur woods that it was invisible unless you were near it.

Mr.

Joshua Pi painted away in the solitude and independence that were so dear to his unsociable heart.

Friday afternoon he finished his job and went home to Carmody.

Soon after his departure, Mrs.

Rachel Lynde drove by, having braved the mud of the lower road out of curiosity, to see what the hull looked like in its new coat of paint.

When she rounded the spruce curve, she.

Saw the side effected.

Mrs.

Lynde.

Oddly, she dropped the reins, held up.

Her hands and said, gracious providence.

She stared as if she could not believe her eyes.

Then she laughed almost hysterically.

There must be some mistake.

There must.

I knew those pies would make a mess of things.

Mrs.

Lynde drove home, meeting several people on the road and stopping to tell them about the hall.

The news flew like wildfire.

Gilbert Blithe poring over a textbook at home, heard it from his father's hired boy at sunset, and rushed breathlessly to Green Gables, joined on the way by Fred Wright.

They found Diana Barry, Jane Andrews, and Anne Shirley, despaired personified, at the yard gate of Green Gables under the big leafless willows.

It isn't true.

Surely, Anne.

Exclaimed Gilbert.

It is true, answered Anne, looking like the muse of tragedy.

Mrs.

Lynde called on her way from Carmody to tell me.

Oh, it is simply dreadful.

What is the use of trying to improve anything?

What is dreadful?

Asked Oliver Sloane, arriving at this moment with a band box he had bought from town for Marilla.

Haven't you heard?

Said Jane wrathfully.

Well, it's simply this joshua Pi has gone and painted the hall blue instead of green, a deep, brilliant blue, the shade they used for painting cards and wheelbarrows.

And Mrs.

Lynn says it is the most hideous color for a building, especially when combined with the red roof that she ever saw or imagined.

You could simply have knocked me down with the feather when I heard it.

It's heartbreaking.

After all the trouble we've had, how on earth could such a mistake have happened?

Well, Diana, the blame of this unmerciful disaster was eventually narrowed down to the Pies.

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.

After Roger Pi 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 Pi astonishly declared that John Andrew told him 157, and there the matter stands to this day.

That night there was blank dismay in every avenley 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 17, Marilla, she sobbed.

It is so mortifying, and it sounds the death knell of our society will simply be laughed out of existence.

In life, as in dreams, however, things often go by contrary.

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 pies.

Roger Pi and John Andrew had bungled.

The matter between them.

And as for Joshua Pi, he must be born a fool not to suspect there was something wrong when he opened the cans and saw the color of the paint.

Joshua Pi, when thus Anna madverted upon, retorted that the Avonlea taste and 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 Sloan, who was a magistrate.

You'll have to pay for 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 goahead.

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.

Lind told them to keep on and show the pies 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 in front of his farm and seed it down with grass.

At his own expense.

And Mrs.

Hiram Sloan called at the school one day and beckoned Anne mysteriously out into the porch to tell her that if society wanted to make a geranium bed at the crossroads in the spring, they needn't be afraid of her cow, for she would see that the marauding animal was kept within safe bounds.

Even Mr.

Harrison chuckled, if he chuckled at all, in private, and was all sympathy outwardly.

Never mind, Anne.

Most paints fade uglier every year, but that blue is as ugly as it can be to begin with, so it's.

Bound to fade prettier and the roof.

Is shingled and painted.

All right, folks will be able to sit in the hall after this without being leaked on.

You've accomplished so much anyhow, but haven't Lee's.

Blue hall will be a byword in all the neighboring settlements from this time out, said Anne bitterly, and it must be confessed that it was.

Thank you for joining Bite at a Time Books today while we read a bite of one of your favorite classics.

If you enjoy our show, be sure to follow us so you get all the new episodes.

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You can catch us on all the social medias at Bite at a Time books again, my name is Brie Carlyle, and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of Anne of Avonlea.

So many advertures and mountains we can climb.