The Borrowers Afield Read Online Free PDF

move at once and then backed slowly, still staring (it was as though, Homily said, they had made up their mind to bite you and then, still malicious, changed it out of caution). "Wicked," she said, "that's what they were; oh, wicked, wicked, wicked..."
    As they shoved their way through the long grass, they were choked with pollen loosened in clouds from above; there were sharp-edged leaves, deceptively sappy and swaying, which cut their hands, gliding across the skin like the soft-drawn bow of a violin but leaving blood behind: there were straw-dry, knotted stems, which caught them round the shins and ankles and which made them stumble and trip forward; often they would land on that cushiony plant with silvery, hairlike spines—spines which pricked and stung. Long grass ... long grass ... for ever afterwards it was Homily's nightmare.
    Then, to get to the orchard, came a scramble through the privet hedge: dead leaves, below the blackened boughs of privet ... dead leaves and rotting, dried-up berries which rose waist-high as they swam their way through them, and, below the leaves, a rustling dampness. And here again were insects: things which turned over on their backs, or hopped suddenly, or slyly slid away.
    Across the orchard—easier going this, because the hens had fed there achieving their usual "blasted heath" effect—a flattened surface of lava-colored earth: the visibility was excellent. But, if they could see, they could also be seen: the fruit trees were widely spaced, giving little cover: anyone glancing from a first-floor window in the house might well exclaim curiously, "What's that, do you think, moving across the orchard? There by the second tree on the right—like leaves blowing. But there isn't a wind. More like something being drawn along on a thread—too steady to be birds..." This was the thought in Pod's mind as he urged Homily onwards. "Oh, I can't," she would cry. "I must sit down. Just a moment, Pod—please!"
    But he was adamant. "You can sit down," he'd say, gripping her below the elbow and spinning her forward across the rubble, "once we get to the spinney. You take her other arm, Arrietty, but keep her moving!"
    Once within the wood, they sank down on the side of the well-worn path, too exhausted to seek further cover. "Oh, dear ... oh, dear ... oh, dear..." Homily kept saying (mechanically, because she always said it) but behind her bright dark eyes in her smudged face, they could see her brain was busy: and she was not hysterical, they could see that too; they could see, in other words, that Homily was "trying." "There's no call for all this running," she said after a moment, when she could get her breath. "Nobody didn't see us go: fer all they know we're still there, trapped-like—under the floor."
    "I wouldn't be so sure," said Arrietty. "There was a face at the kitchen window. I saw it as we were going up the bank. A boy it looked like, with a cat or something."
    "If anyone'd seen us," remarked Homily, "they'd have been after us, that's what I say."
    "That's a fact," said Pod.
    "Well, which way do we go from here?" asked Homily, gazing about among the tree trunks. There was a long scratch across her cheek and her hair hung down in wisps.
    "Well, we better be getting these loads sorted out first," said Pod. "Let's see what we've brought. What have you got in that borrowing-bag, Arrietty?"
    Arrietty opened the bag she had packed so hurriedly two days before against just this emergency. She laid out the contents on the hardened mud of the path and they looked an odd collection. There were three tin lids off varying sizes of pill bottles which fitted neatly one inside the other; a sizeable piece of candle and seven wax-matches; a change of underclothes and an extra jersey knitted by Homily on blunted darning needles from a much-washed, unraveled sock, and last (but most treasured) her pencil from a dance program and her Diary and Proverb Book.
    "Now why did you want to cart that along?"