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from Rosabelle’s homeless relatives. But then Bluebell’s husband Rollo, a brash, brutish fellow with menacing whiskers and bad breath, had invited three or four of his bachelor friends—ne’er-do-well rogues from Hawkshead—for a fortnight’s holiday. They had set up a dartboard and a billiard table at the east end of the attic, rolled a keg of ginger beer and a round of ripe yellow cheese up the spiral stairs in the kitchen wall, and commenced to enjoy themselves long and loudly.
    Ridley deeply resented this intrusion into his tranquil life, the life of a self-satisfied gentleman rat settled in comfortable lodgings, which heretofore had been altogether civilized and enjoyable. Finally, one midnight, when the gaiety had reached an unendurable pitch, he went to the east end of the attic (he had taken to calling it the Hill Top Saloon) to remonstrate. But Rollo took immediate offense.
    “Wot’s all this, eh?” he growled, raising himself up on his back legs and glaring down his whiskery nose at Ridley, who found himself feeling suddenly rather short and out of trim. “Interferin’ wi’ me gennulmen friends, are ye?”
    “Well, no,” replied Ridley nervously. “I only—”
    “Stow it,” Rollo growled. His tail twitched threateningly. “Give me any more o’ yer lip, Rattail, and I’ll punch ye in the nose.”
    In the circumstance, Ridley thought it just as well to allow the party to continue. He took himself off to his room and comforted himself with the reminder that this was only a temporary situation. Rollo’s riotous friends would be gone soon, the Saloon would be closed, and attic life would return to its normal, decorous state.
    But the fortnight came and went and Rollo’s friends showed no signs of departing. Instead, they invited their friends to join them. More cheeses were pilfered from the Hill Top dairy and supplemented by mutton, bacon, bread, and scones from the Jenningses’ kitchen, as well as apples from the apple barrel and corn from the barn. When the ginger beer ran out, it was replaced by bottles of stout pinched from the nearby Tower Bank Arms. And all the while Felicia Frummety slept on the warm hearth below, allowing the renegade rats to run rampant wherever they liked.
    So, just when Ridley had hoped that these unwanted guests would be gone and the attic restored to its former broad expanse of dusty peace, the party in the Saloon only grew louder and larger. One of the rats had engaged a concertina player, who sat on a stool and entertained the crowd—the growing crowd—with bawdy songs he had learned from veterans of the war in South Africa. After a few days, the concertina player invited a trio of can-can dancers, who kicked up their heels on a wooden crackerbox stage that their admirers had cobbled together, with curtains made of scraps stolen from Mrs. Jennings’s workbasket.
    Poor Ridley. He who had preferred the quiet life and liked to retire early to his chambers found himself kept awake almost until dawn by the sound of rats enjoying themselves in his attic. His attic, he thought resentfully, as he lay sleepless through the night, with bits of cotton wool stuffed in his ears and the covers pulled over his head.
    Bad as the situation was, it was about to get worse—oh, much, much worse. Quite a few of the fellows noticed with approval that the Hill Top attic was clean and dry and undisturbed (Miss Potter had better things to do than bother about the attic), and decided to bring their wives and children and all their family furnishings to take up lodgings there. And of course, rats—as Tabitha Twitchit has already pointed out—multiply faster than rabbits. In no time at all, there were some six dozen rat families in permanent residence. (This was according to the January census, which could not be relied upon as accurate, for several large litters had been produced since the count was made and more were on the way.) The roomy attic no longer seemed roomy at all, and