The Borrowers: Chapters 9–13

It was an eye. Or it looked like an eye. Clear and bright like the color of the sky. An eye like her own but enormous. A glaring eye. Breathless with fear, she sat up. And the eye blinked.

“Of course,” said Arrietty. “Can’t you?”
“No,” he stammered. “I mean—yes. I mean I’ve just come from India.”
“What’s that got to do with it?” asked Arrietty.

“Well, if you’re born in India, you’re bilingual. And if you’re bilingual, you can’t read. Not so well.”

“My mother believes in them,” she said, trying to appease him. “She thinks she saw one once. It was when she was a girl and lived with her parents behind the sand pile in the potting shed.”

“Don’t you eat soup?” asked the boy.
“Of course we do,” laughed Arrietty. “My father had an uncle who had a little boat which he rowed round in the stock-pot picking up flotsam and jetsam...."

“Don’t you eat soup?” asked the boy.
“Of course we do,” laughed Arrietty. “My father had an uncle who had a little boat which he rowed round in the stock-pot picking up flotsam and jetsam...."

He lost his oars and the boat sprang a leak but he flung a line over the pot handle and pulled himself alongside the rim. But all that stock—fathoms of it!

So Arrietty told him about borrowing—how difficult it was and how dangerous. She told him about the storerooms under the floor; about Pod’s early exploits, the skill he had shown and the courage...

“My mother’s very nice,” he said. “She lives in India. Why did you lose all your worldly riches?”

“Well,” said Arrietty, “the kitchen boiler burst and hot water came pouring through the floor into our house and everything was washed away and piled up in front of the grating. My father worked night and day. First hot, then cold. Trying to salvage things. And there’s a dreadful draught in March through that grating. He got ill, you see, and couldn’t go borrowing...."

The boy sat thoughtfully on his haunches, chewing a blade of grass.

“But we are Borrowers,” she explained, “like you’re a—a human bean or whatever it’s called. We’re part of the house. You might as well say that the fire grate steals the coal from the coal scuttle.”

He told her about India and China and North America and the British Commonwealth.

She looked at the homemade dips set in upturned drawing pins which Homily had placed as candle-holders among the tea things; the old teapot, a hollow oak-apple, with its quill spout and wired-on handle—burnished it was now and hard with age...

...there was a plate of hot dried currants, well plumped before the fire; there were cinnamon breadcrumbs, crispy golden, and lightly dredged with sugar, and in front of each place, oh, delight of delights, a single potted shrimp.

“Well?” said Homily, gingerly pouring. “Tell us what you saw!”

“No, Pod,” protested Homily, “it’s a fact. No need to be sarcastic. All the Bell-PulIs were like that. Like a collar, she said it was—”
“Pity it didn’t choke her,” said Pod.

Arrietty tore out this last page. Turning it over she read on the reverse side: “July 11th: Make Not a Toil of your Pleasure. Niagara passed by C. D. Graham in a cask, 1886."

There were spools and spools of colored silks and cottons and small variegated balls of odd wool, penpoints which Homily used as flour scoops, and bottle tops galore.

And at last, on the fourth day, Pod gave in. He laid down his hammer (a small electric-bell clapper) and said to Arrietty: “Come along..."

Arrietty was glad to see the morning room; the door luckily had been left ajar and it was fascinating to stand at last in the thick pile of the carpet gazing upward at the shelves and pillars and towering gables of the famous overmantel.

So that’s where they had lived, she thought, those pleasure-loving creatures, remote and gay and self-sufficient.

The blotting paper, when he pushed it, floated down quite softly, riding lightly on the air, and lay at last some feet beyond the desk, pink and fresh, on the carpet’s dingy pile.

"...And I’m doing it for their sakes,” she told herself doggedly, “and one day they’ll thank me.”

On the upper landing she saw an open door and a great square of golden light which like a barrier lay across the passage. “I’ve got to pass through that,” Arrietty told herself, trying to be brave. Inside the lighted room a voice was talking, droning on.

As she passed the open door she had a glimpse of firelight and lamplight and gleaming furniture and dark-red silk brocade.

The floor was linoleum, rather worn, and the rugs were shabby.

The floor was linoleum, rather worn, and the rugs were shabby.

“I had to go. Tea was ready. My father fetched me.”
He understood this. “Oh,” he said matter-of-factly, and did not reproach her.

Arrietty stared back at him, stuffing the letter up her jersey. Could he see beyond her into the shadowed room. Could he see the tousled shape in bed?