Anne did not know exactly how old Letty was, though of course Miss Jule did; but she always thought and spoke of her as a schoolgirl, and told Anne that it would be a fine chance to improve her French, and that in return she could teach Letty about wood things, for Letty had been brought up almost altogether in the city. So Anne wondered whether she knew enough French to make Letty understand, and went about talking to herself and all the animals on the place in such words as she knew, much to the confusion and disgust of Waddles, who recognized something familiar in the invitation to _aller à la poste_, yet did not quite understand it as the usual invitation to “go to the post-office.”
At first Tommy had not been interested. “If it was a rather big boy with a real gun that was coming, we could go hunting together and have some fun next cold weather when the bunnies come out. Girls aren’t much good excepting Anne, and even she don’t seem to care for guns either,” he said.
Tommy’s latest treasure was a spring shot-gun that went off with an alarming pop, but for which he had no ammunition, so as yet he went about, cocking, aiming, and firing at imaginary big game,--real squirrels and crows,--quite content to see them scurry away in alarm; at the same time being careful, as his father had charged him, never to point it at people, for this is a “mustn’t be” of a real gun, which a boy must learn by heart before he can even dream of owning one.
When one Saturday morning Martin, who lived at the Hilltop Farm, came with a note saying that Miss Letty and Hamlet had arrived, and that Miss Jule would be happy to have Anne and Tommy come up to dinner, Tommy forgot his poor opinion of girls in general and was as eager as Anne herself.
Miss Jule kept to the country habit of a one o’clock dinner, and had a hearty but movable tea at the end of day, when for six months of the year one begrudges spending much time indoors. As the note came before nine o’clock, it was too much to expect that the children should wait until nearly dinner time before accepting the invitation.
“Of course,” said Anne, in explanation of starting at ten o’clock, “at most places it doesn’t do to go until a few minutes before you are asked, because the people may be busy, or making the dessert, or not dressed; but Miss Jule is always busy, has fruit for dessert, and is never dressed, so she’s quite as ready one time as another,” which somewhat startling statement of Anne’s did not mean that Miss Jule was a clothesless savage, but simply that, without the useless state of fuss and feathers known as “being dressed,” she was always ready to have her friends come and take her as they found her, which was usually doing something interesting.