And the very first or ante-room we reach is the private apartment of Don Caesar and Lady Purr-a-meow. I really ought to have put Lady P. before Don C. in that last sentence of mine, for she alone rules king and priest in this charming little room. Of course Don Caesar has a couch in one corner, in which he is graciously permitted to sleep at night, or enjoy a siesta during the day. Lady Purr-a-meow does not object to that, and she even allows him to have his meals here so long as he behaves himself. She does not object either to have a game at romps with Don Caesar when _she_ has a mind to; I emphasise the _she_ because it makes all the difference in the world if Don Caesar himself proposes the game. She whacks him at once, and sends him to bed, and she knows exactly all his tender points, and where a claw hurts most, on his nose, for example, or on his closely-shaven loins. She whacks him if he goes too near her dish, she whacks him if he barks, and sometimes whacks him because he doesn't. She whacks him if he comes too near to the window, and whacks him if he stops too far away from it. She whacks him sometimes for looking at her. If he doesn't look at her she says he is sulky, and whacks him for that; she whacks him for fun and for exercise, and to show her authority, so that, upon the whole, Don Caesar de Bazan gets a good deal more whacking than he deserves. In this room is Leonard's and Effie's library of old-fashioned picture-books, and many toys, and a little couch near the nicely-curtained window, on which it is delightful to recline on a lovely summer evening and read while dreamy, old-fashioned music is being played by a huge musical box that stands on a table, and while a breeze, laden with the odours of the woods and the wild flowers, is stealing in at the open window, and toying with the crimson curtains. This window opens right on the lawn, that is, on the back lawn, and here a strange sight may be seen--namely, half a score of snow-white, smutty-nosed, garnet-eyed Himalayan rabbits, brought home first by a sailor uncle, and the same number of daft-looking little piebald guinea pigs. These have houses outside, and a monstrous owl called Tom is watching them half asleep from his cage near a window, and thinking how nice one or two of them would be to eat. But we re-enter the ante-room through the casement window, and pass on into a kind of hall lighted from the roof. In this place there are so many pets of different kinds that it is impossible to know which to admire or wonder at first. This hall communicates with another room with a larger window, which looks over the precipice right down into the lake, where lives Joe the monster pike, and the inmates of both rooms are free to scamper or fly--for here we have both fur and feathers--from one to the other.