But what strikes a grown-up person most here, is that everything about him is in miniature, dwarfed, as it were; the very bushes and shrubs have the appearance of being old, and yet they are excessively small. Here, for example, is a little forest of pine trees and larches which, as far as shape goes, might be a hundred years old, and here again is a thicket of spruce, so ancient looking, yet so tiny, that if pigeons flew about in it no bigger than humble-bees, we would not be a bit astonished, and if, flitting from bough to bough of these dwarfed elms and oaks, we saw thrushes and blackbirds not a whit larger than blue-bottle flies, we should not raise our brows in wonder.
Again, when we look around us at the tiny rockeries and flower beds and the Liliputian fountains, and then glance at the fairy-like palace itself, why, we – that is, we grown-up folks – begin to think we are giants and ogres, or that all we see around us is due to some kind of enchantment. If a regiment of real fairies came trooping out of the miniature palace, we would not be rude enough to look as if there were anything particularly strange in the matter.
But behold, Peter, who does look tall amid such surroundings, opens the hall door of the Castle, and out step Don Caesar de Bazan and the Hon. Lady Purr-a-meow.
Don Caesar shakes hands with everybody all round, and her ladyship does the same. The Don is a poodle with his hair cut in the most fantastic Frenchified fashion, and her Ladyship is a cat of the tabby persuasion, who condescends to accept bed and board at Castle Beautiful. Don Caesar and Lady Purr-a-meow go off for a scamper round the hill and through the miniature woods, and Peter, preceded by Leonard and Effie, enters the porch, and we follow, feeling all the while as big as giants. The verandah is just under the tower where the pigeons dwell, and a couple of tame jackdaws have built a nest and brought out young.
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.
In these rooms are perches and cages and pens, and shelves and nests and comfortable cosy corners of every description, and all kinds of seed and food dishes, and abundance of water and an allowance of milk; and everything – thanks to the little owners, and to worthy old Peter – is as clean and sweet as though nothing dwelt in the rooms. This is the home par excellence of the happy family. The secret is, that every creature must be young when placed therein, so that they soon come to know that though they may play together, they must study each other’s feelings, and neither hurt each other nor be rude to one another.
Right in the centre of the square room is a fountain playing, the spray falling down upon a charming little rockery in the middle of a stone basin. The fountain can be turned on at the will of the owner, and whenever it plays the birds take advantage of it, and fly across and across through the spray, and so enjoy a shower bath. But the white rats do not care for a bath, and when the birds, thoroughly wet and thoroughly tired of the sport, sit down on a perch to preen their draggled feathers, the cosy white rats in their garments of ermine look up at them with crimson eyes, in which dwells a kind of pity, and seem to say, “We really wouldn’t be you for all the world.”
What other pets are there in this happy family, did you ask? Well, there are pet pigmy pigeons, and pet kittens, a tame duck, who is greatly bullied, a sea-gull who talks like a Christian, half-a-dozen starlings, who inquire into everything, and a jackdaw who is never out of mischief, and whom Effie has serious thoughts of sending into exile.
As soon as Leonard and she appear they are surrounded, and the din is for a time indescribable. The dwarf or pigmy pigeons hover round them and alight on their shoulders and hands; the kittens chase the rats, who squeak, and pretend to be terribly afraid; the sea-gull struts about crying, “Oh! you pretty, pretty, pretties;” the jackdaw whistles “Duncan Grey;” all the starlings start singing at once; and the idiotic duck can’t think of anything better to do than stand flapping his wings in a corner and crying, “What, what, what, what!”
We tear ourselves away from this happy family at last, and make tracks for the bird rooms, or aviaries. One room is devoted to British, the other to foreign birds, all nicely assorted and sized, so that they live in the utmost unison. There are soft-billed birds and hard-billed birds, so there are both seeds and mash to suit their palates. Here again we have fountains, one in each aviary, and these, when playing, are a source of never-ending delight.
When the sun is shining upon the foreign aviary, what a sight it is to see those birds, in all their brilliancy of colour and beauty, flitting from bough to bough in their bonnie home; but if you want music you must enter the adjoining room, where the birds of Britain dwell. Gaudy their plumage may not be but, oh! their voices are very sweet.
All round both these rooms grow trailing plants, that hang over the aviaries like great green plumes, and when night falls and the Chinese lanterns are lit, and the fountains all playing, the whole place is indeed like a fairy palace.
But it is summer on the occasion of this visit of ours, the grass is green, and flowers are everywhere out of doors, in beds and rockeries, peeping through the moss, hiding under trees, and covering every porch and verandah with masses of foliage and lovely flowers.
Book One – Chapter Four
Gipsy Life
“Calmly the happy days flew on,
Unnumbered in their flight.”
“Moon the shroud shall lap thee fast,
And the sleep be on thee cast,
That