`` It CA N'T be true , '' said Anne blankly . `` That 's just what I said when I heard it first , do n't you know , '' said Gertie , who was enjoying herself hugely . '' I said it could n't be true ... that Judson Parker would n't have the HEART to do it , do n't you know . But father met him this afternoon and asked him about it and he said it WAS true . Just fancy ! His farm is side-on to the Newbridge road and how perfectly awful it will look to see advertisements of pills and plasters all along it , do n't you know ? '' The Improvers DID know , all too well . Even the least imaginative among them could picture the grotesque effect of half a mile of board fence adorned with such advertisements . All thought of church and school grounds vanished before this new danger . Parliamentary rules and regulations were forgotten , and Anne , in despair , gave up trying to keep minutes at all . Everybody talked at once and fearful was the hubbub . `` Oh , let us keep calm , '' implored Anne , who was the most excited of them all , `` and try to think of some way of preventing him . '' `` I do n't know how you 're going to prevent him , '' exclaimed Jane bitterly . `` Everybody knows what Judson Parker is . He 'd do ANYTHING for money . He has n't a SPARK of public spirit or ANY sense of the beautiful . '' The prospect looked rather unpromising . Judson Parker and his sister were the only Parkers in Avonlea , so that no leverage could be exerted by family connections . Martha Parker was a lady of all too certain age who disapproved of young people in general and the Improvers in particular . Judson was a jovial , smooth-spoken man , so uniformly goodnatured and bland that it was surprising how few friends he had .
Perhaps he had got the better in too many business transactions ... which seldom makes XXXXX popularity .
about among at before by for in of that to