The Borrowers Afloat Read Online Free PDF Page A

must say, Lupy," Homily remarked wonderingly as she dropped the shells one by one into the hair-tidy (it was horn-shaped with a loop to hang it on and a faded blue bow on the top), "that you've become what I'd call a very good manager...."
    "For one," agreed Lupy, laughing, "who was brought up in a drawing room and never raised a hand."
    "You weren't brought up in a drawing room," Homily reminded her.
    "Oh, I don't remember those Rain-pipe days," said Lupy blithely. "I married so young. Just a child..." and she turned suddenly to Arrietty. "Now, what are you dreaming about, Miss-butter-wouldn't-melt-in-her-mouth?"
    "I was thinking of Spiller," said Arrietty.
    "A-ha!" cried Aunt Lupy. "She was thinking of Spiller!" And she laughed again. "You don't want to waste precious thoughts on a ragamuffin like Spiller. You'll meet lots of nice borrowers, all in good time. Maybe, one day, you'll meet one brought up in a library: they're the best, so they say, gentlemen all, and a good cultural background."
    "I was thinking," continued Arrietty evenly, trying to keep her temper, "that I couldn't imagine Spiller dressed up in white kid."
    "It doesn't stay white long," cried Lupy. "Of that I can assure you! It has to be white to start with because it's made from an evening glove. A ball glove, shoulder length—it's one of the few things I salvaged from the drawing room. But he will have kid, says it's hard-wearing. It stiffens up, of course, directly he gets it wet, but he soon wears it soft again. And by that time," she added, "it's all colors of the rainbow."
    Arrietty could imagine the colors; they would not be "all colors of the rainbow"; they would be colors without real color, the shades that made Spiller invisible—soft fawns, pale browns, dull greens, and a kind of shadowy gun-metal. Spiller took care about "seasoning" his clothes: he brought them to a stage where he could melt into the landscape, where one could stand beside him, almost within touching distance, and yet not see him. Spiller deceived animals as well as gypsies. Spiller deceived hawks, and stoats, and foxes.... Spiller might not wash but he had no Spiller scent: he smelled of hedgerows, and bark, and grasses, and of wet sun-warmed earth; he smelled of buttercups, dried cow dung, and early morning dew....
    "When will he come?" Arrietty asked, but ran away upstairs before anyone could tell her. She wept a little in the upstairs room, crouched beside the soap dish.
    To talk of Spiller reminded her of out-of-doors and of a wild, free life she might never know again. This new-found haven among the lath and plaster had all too soon become another prison....

Chapter Four
    It was Hendreary and the boys who carried the furniture up the laths with Pod standing by to receive it. In this way, Lupy lent them just what she wished to lend and nothing they would have chosen. Homily did not grumble, however. She had become very quiet lately as slowly she realized their position.
    Sometimes they stayed downstairs after meals, helping generally or talking to Lupy. But they gauged the length of these visits according to Lupy's mood: when she became flustered, blaming them for some small mishap brought on by herself, they knew it was time to go. "We couldn't do right today," they would say, sitting empty-handed upstairs on Homily's old champagne corks that Lupy had unearthed for stools. They would sit by the chimney casing in the inner room to get the heat from the stones. Here Pod and Homily had a double bed, one of those from the dollhouse. Arrietty slept in the outer room, close beside the entrance hole. She slept on a thickish piece of wadding, borrowed in the old days from a box of artist's pastels, and they had given her most of the bedclothes.
    "We shouldn't have come, Pod," Homily said one evening as they sat alone upstairs.
    "We had no choice," said Pod.
    "And we got to go," she added and sat there watching him as he stitched the sole of a boot.
    "To where?" asked Pod.
    Things