At the end of the middle apartment--which, like the Athenian Club antrium, was the general meeting place of those in the house, and served the purpose of a drawing-room--was another draped portal, admitting Mr. Dimsdale's male guests into a large billiard-room and a comfortable smoking-room; also his lady guests into a boudoir and a music-room. Beyond these, and shut off by another narrow passage at right angles to those at the sides, were the kitchen, the servants' quarters, and the domestic offices. As the stables, in the opinion of many people, were too near the house, the kitchen was too far distant from the dining-room. But Mr. Dimsdale, who was fond of delicate fare, prevented the cooling of the food in transit by having it brought to the table in hot-water dishes. He secretly acknowledged to himself that he was wrong as regards both stables and kitchen, but would never admit any oversight to his friends. As he had been his own architect, he believed "Rangoon" to be almost perfect in construction, design, beauty, and in its blending of Indian charm and English comfort. And in the main he was not far wrong.
The house was filled with quaint Eastern curios, and draperies and contrivances and furniture, although of this last there was comparatively little, since Mr. Dimsdale did not care to overcrowd his rooms, as is the English fashion; perhaps it was this sparseness which gave the house its foreign look. The library was furnished with tables and couches and chairs and bookcases of black teak, elaborately carved, while the central apartment contained nothing but bamboo chairs and tiny bamboo tables, all of which were covered with brightly-hued draperies. The dining-room was the most English-looking part of the house, as it was decorated and furnished in the Jacobean manner, and looked massively British. But the French windows--three in the front and three at the side--uncurtained and pronouncedly bare, admitted too great a glare into an apartment sacred to eating, which, for some traditional reason, is always supposed to have rather a twilight atmosphere. But Mr. Dimsdale loved plenty of light and fresh air and all the sunshine he could get, hence the many windows of the bungalow. It would have been easier to have removed the walls dividing the rooms from the verandah, and to have given them the full publicity of Eastern shops. And perhaps only the climate prevented Mr. Dimsdale from going this length. He was a fanatic in many ways, and had the full courage of his cranky convictions.