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the end), and there was a regular supply of beans, bacon, and cheese, with the occasional savory bubble and squeak, and no end of delicious cake and pie. In fact, Ridley had never before enjoyed such substantial provender, and as a result, his already stout figure had grown several sizes stouter, and he could no longer button his waistcoat and jacket.
    It wasn’t just the fine dining that Ridley enjoyed, either. For when the renovations to the farmhouse were completed and Miss Potter took up residence in the older part of the house, she brought with her a great number of handsome leather-bound books, gilt-framed paintings, pieces of antique china and porcelain and silver, and so many other fascinating treasures that Ridley felt he was living in what might fairly be called an art museum—exactly the right sort of residence for a gentleman of fine taste.
    What’s more, Miss Potter was an artist and children’s author of wide reputation, and she liked to do her artwork on the table in front of the window in what had once been Mrs. Jennings’s kitchen. So Ridley had the rare opportunity to enjoy her little books before they were seen by the public. He often lurked in the chimney corner until she went up to bed, so he could have an admiring look at her current project. He very much liked the one she was working on now, which involved a pair of rats, something like himself and Rosabelle, who captured an impertinent young kitten and tied him up with string, preparatory to wrapping the saucy fellow in pastry and steaming him like a roly-poly pudding.
    Miss Potter had not yet got to the end of her book, so Ridley could not be sure how the story came out. But if it went as it seemed to be going, he knew he should like it very well. It included a stunning passage that made him shiver with fright and grin with delight at the very same time, for in it he recognized Hill Top itself, with its staircase hidden in the wall:
     
It was an old, old house, full of cupboards and passages. Some of the walls were four feet thick, and there used to be queer noises inside them, as if there might be a little secret staircase. Certainly there were odd little jagged doorways in the wainscot, and things disappeared at night—especially cheese and bacon.
     
Miss Potter’s fictional Hill Top seemed dark, somehow, and sinister, as though its walls and passages might hide macabre secrets beneath the serene ordinariness of everyday life. This description made Ridley shiver because it gave him the sense that disruptive powers might lurk behind any respectable façade, and since he was so comfortably contented, this little frisson of horror was pleasurable indeed.
    And all taken together, Ridley Rattail enjoyed every domestic pleasure that any rat might wish. He and Rosabelle lived a sedate, self-satisfied, and entirely pleasant life, rich in civil discourse and the pleasures of gentility, always careful not to call attention to themselves in any way. Of course, had there been a mouser downstairs who paid the proper attention to larder or dairy, it might not have been so easy to escape notice, and get away with the cheese and bacon. But the only cat was a young, inexperienced feline named Miss Felicia Frummety, who belonged to Mrs. Jennings but liked to boast that she was Miss Potter’s cat. Felicia, a vain creature who spent a great deal of time grooming herself, could not be bothered to notice, so the rats’ forays into the kitchen and dairy went unchallenged.
    But Ridley’s contentment was short-lived. It happened that Rosabelle’s sister Bluebell and Bluebell’s husband and four children had been left without a home when a storm blew the roof off their barn on the other side of Esthwaite Water. Rosabelle, generous to a fault, hospitably offered them refuge.
    And that was when things had turned sour, Ridley thought darkly, taking another turn around his comfortable, nicely furnished parlor. He could not in good conscience object to a brief visit