The Borrowers Afield Read Online Free PDF Page A

heard it: it would merge and become part of the room's living stillness, like the simmer of the kettle or the ticking of the clock. Night after night; week after week; month after month; year, perhaps, after year ... Yes, Kate realized (staring in the same stunned way even though, at this minute, Mrs. May and Mr. Beguid came back to the room still talking loudly of wash-basins), Arrietty must indeed have told Tom everything!

Chapter Four
"No tale loses in the telling."
Longfellow, American Poet, died 1882; also
Walt Whitman, 1892
[Extract from Arrtetty's Diary and
Proverb Book, March 26th]
    A ND ALL that was needed now, she thought (as she lay that night in bed, listening to the constant gurgle in the pipes of the constant H and C), was for old Tom to tell her everything in as full detail—as Arrietty must have told it to him. And, having already said so much, he might—she felt—go this much farther, in spite of his fear of things put down in writing. And she wouldn't tell either, she resolved staunchly—at any rate, not during his lifetime, although why he should mind so much she couldn't understand, seeing that he was known already as "the biggest liar in five counties." But what seemed still more hopeful was that, having shown her the little book, he had not even asked for it back. She had it now in bed with her, stuffed beneath her pillow and it was full of "things in writing." Not that she could understand them quite: the entries were too short, little headings, they seemed like, jotted down by Arrietty to remind herself of dates. But some of them sounded extraordinarily weird and mysterious ... Yes, she decided, suddenly inspired, that was the way to work it: she would ask old Tom to explain the headings: what could Arrietty have meant (she would ask) by "Black men—mother saved."?
    And this was, more or less, what did happen: while Mrs. May talked business each day with Messrs. Jobson, Thring, Beguid and Beguid, or argued with builders and plumbers and plumber's mates, Kate would wander off alone across the fields and find her own way to the cottage, seeking out old Tom.
    On some days (as Kate, in later years, would explain to her children) he would seem a bit "cagey" and disinterested, but on other days a particular heading in the diary would seem to inspire him and his imagination would take wings and sail away on such swirls and eddies of vivid memory that Kate, spellbound, could hardly believe that he had not at some time (in some other life, perhaps) been a borrower himself. Mrs. May, Kate remembered, had said just this of her younger brother: this brother who, although three years his junior, must have known old Tom (Had not old Tom himself admitted this much?). Had they been friends—great friends, perhaps? They certainly seemed birds of a feather—one famous for telling tall stories because "he was such a tease"; the other, more simply described as "the biggest liar in five counties." And it was this thought which, long after she was grown up, decided Kate to tell the world what was said to have happened to Pod and Homily and little Arrietty after that dreadful day when, smoked out of their house under the kitchen, they sought for refuge in the wild outdoors.
    Here is her story—all "put down in writing." Let us sift the evidence ourselves.

Chapter Five
"Step by step climbs The Hill."
Victoria Tubular Bridge, Montreal, opened 1866
[Extract from Arrietty's Diary and
Proverb Book, August 25th]
    W ELL, AT FIRST , it seems they just ran, but they ran in the right direction—up the azalea bank, where (so many months ago now) Arrietty had first met the boy and through the Jong grass at the top. How they got through that, Homily used to say afterwards, she never knew—nothing but stalks, close set. And insects: Homily had never dreamed there could be so many different kinds of insects—slow ones, hanging on things; fast, scuttling ones, and ones (these were the worst) which stared at you and did not