When she threw open the shutters toward the wooded side of the place, her eye rested on two unusual bumps on the reddish bark of a Scotch pine. She looked again, and even without the aid of her field-glass saw that two of the baby screech-owls had settled for their daytime sleep in the crotches of the pine, their young rusty gray feathers so blending with the bark that it would have been impossible to see them except from the slant of light and the fact that she was on a level with them. [Illustration: _Waddles Baying the Owls._] Hurrying down she walked under the tree, and though she knew exactly where they perched, it was some time before she could find them again. Their eyes were tightly closed, yet as she walked around the tree the heads turned and followed her until it seemed as if they would twist them off altogether. [Illustration] “I know where some of those words come from that you do not like us to say,” Anne said to her mother as she went in to breakfast. “To ‘rubber neck’ is a regular verb in pure owl, for I’ve just seen them do it.” Before the morning was out, the children had discovered three of the baby owls in a hemlock, and one parent perched in a hackberry close to her stone-fence dining room, probably waiting for supper time, as the table was then occupied by the little day birds that hopped about fearlessly, as if relying upon Anne and the bright sunlight for protection, for little Oo-oo is a true night owl. After Anne had searched the orchard for the nest, and given it up in despair, Tommy found the owl’s home quite by accident. He was hunting for the sixth little owl, and thought he saw it in a pine near the house. Not being daunted by pine gum, he had nearly reached the top of the tree, which was bushy instead of pointed, as the leader had been snapped off in a sleet storm, and several branches were struggling to replace it. Suddenly he called to Anne in great excitement, for there, in the bushy place, resting on the thick stump of the broken tree-top, was the owl’s nest, not fifty feet from Anne’s window. It was not much of a nest, to be sure, merely a collection of sticks and matted pine needles, but that the six owlets had spent the weeks between hatching and flying in it, was proved by the bits of bones, fur, and beetle shells with which it was littered. Of course Anne had to go and look, and later on they coaxed Miss Letty up too, for it was quite easy climbing, if you didn’t mind the stickiness. As they all came down again, who should come in but Mr. Hugh to return a book. Miss Letty shook hands carelessly, without looking at him, thereby mischievously transferring a goodly share of pine gum from her palm to his; but though he looked surprised, there was nothing for him to do but laugh, and it somewhat broke the stiffness that was always between them.