Miss Letty laughed at the notion, but Anne could not be shaken in her belief, and as there was nothing to do but wait, she waited. Meantime Happy Hall was quite a tranquil place, that is, on the rare days when neither Hamlet, Mr. Wolf, Quick, nor Tip came to visit Waddles, or Schnapps and Friday did not come to drink in the cow pond and meet Pinkie Scott’s fox terriers and Hans Sachs the dachshund on the war-path for rats behind the barn, Pinkie’s house being just above. When this happened, hard words were exchanged, for though Schnapps and Hans Sachs had been litter brothers, they were now in deadly feud, and of course Friday stood up for his chum. * * * * * The summer of this particular season that the children always remembered afterward as “the year when Miss Letty came,” was very warm indeed, and Anne established a midday retreat in her beloved old apple tree, or rather two retreats. One was high up in the broad branches where you could look down into various birds’ nests. A few slats, placed long ago by Obi, the garden boy, had been added to by Baldy, so that the perch had places for three. The other was a sort of house below, furnished with chairs, a table, and hammocks. This gave shelter above and below even in rainy weather, and from it in different directions the lawn, garden, shrubbery, kennels, and distant hills could be seen with all their inhabitants of flowers, butterflies, birds, and fourfooted animals. Anne called this place the “time eater,” because, as she said, “you go there to stay a minute, or you sit down to read, but you don’t come away and you don’t read; you simply look and listen, and before you know it is dinner time, and the morning is all eaten up.” The things that Anne and Tommy heard there as they spent their vacation time together were Heart of Nature’s own stories, and it was his own voice that told them. It was also a good point of vantage from which to watch the play of the dogs, and Anne discovered one thing beyond question, that where dogs live and are fed there the birds gather. In fact, during the nesting season that year the doings of the birds and little beasts that fed from the dogs’ table would fill a whole book. [Illustration: _Anne and Tommy._] At the north of the nursery kennel was a broad-topped stone fence. Being convenient and of exactly the right height, Anne used a wide hollow stone as a mortar for pounding the dog biscuit, taking a narrow stone for a pestle, for the Waddles family all preferred drinking their milk or soup, and having the biscuit in bits the size of small lumps of sugar so that it could be gnawed like a bone, to having it soaked into pulpy stew. Of course there was cracker dust left in the mortar, and little bits would fly about here and there. But no matter how much dust was left at evening, the next morning found this place as clean as if it had been scrubbed, so Anne began to watch.