by Mary Norton
“Not my hands it doesn’t,” said Pod; “they’re hardened like,” and Arrietty sneezed again.
“Dusty, isn’t it?” she said.
Pod straightened his back. “No good pulling where it’s knotted right in,” he said, watching her. “No wonder it hurts your hands. See here,” he exclaimed after a moment, “you leave it! It’s your first time up like. You sit on the step there and take a peek out of doors.”
“Oh, no—” Arrietty began (“If I don’t help,” she thought, “he won’t want me again”) but Pod insisted.
“I’m better on me own,” he said. “I can choose me bits, if you see what I mean, seeing as it’s me who’s got to make the brush.”
Chapter Eight
THE step was warm but very steep. “If I got down on to the path,” Arrietty thought, “I might not get up again,” so for some moments she sat quietly. After a while she noticed the shoe-scraper.
“Arrietty,” called Pod softly, “where have you got to?”
“I just climbed down the shoe-scraper,” she called back.
He came along and looked down at her from the top of the step. “That’s all right,” he said after a moment’s stare, “but never climb down anything that isn’t fixed like. Supposing one of them came along and moved the shoe-scraper—where would you be then? How would you get up again?”
“It’s heavy to move,” said Arrietty.
“Maybe,” said Pod, “but it’s movable. See what I mean? There’s rules, my lass, and you got to learn.”
“This path,” Arrietty said, “goes round the house. And the bank does too.”
“Well,” said Pod, “what of it?”
Arrietty rubbed one red kid shoe on a rounded stone. “It’s my grating,” she explained. “I was thinking that my grating must be just round the corner. My grating looks out on to this bank.”
“Your grating!” exclaimed Pod. “Since when has it been your grating?”
“I was thinking,” Arrietty went on. “Suppose I just went round the corner and called through the grating to Mother?”
“No,” said Pod, “we’re not going to have none of that. Not going round corners.”
“Then,” went on Arrietty, “she’d see I was all right like.”
“Well,” said Pod, and then he half smiled, “go quickly then and call. I’ll watch for you here. Not loud mind!”
Arrietty ran. The stones in the path were firmly bedded and her light, soft shoes hardly seemed to touch them. How glorious it was to run—you could never run under the floor: you walked, you stooped, you crawled—but you never ran. Arrietty nearly ran past the grating. She saw it just in time after she turned the corner. Yes, there it was quite close to the ground, embedded deeply in the old wall of the house; there was moss below it in a spreading, greenish stain.
Arrietty ran up to it. “Mother!” she called, her nose against the iron grille. “Mother!” She waited quietly and, after a moment, she called again.
At the third call Homily came. Her hair was coming down and she carried, as though it were heavy, the screw lid of a pickle jar, filled with soapy water. “Oh,” she said in an annoyed voice, “you didn’t half give me a turn! What do you think you’re up to? Where’s your father?”
Arrietty jerked her head sideways. “Just there—by the front door!” She was so full of happiness that, out of Homily’s sight, her toes danced on the green moss. Here she was on the other side of the grating—here she was at last, on the outside—looking in!
“Yes,” said Homily, “they open that door like that—the first day of spring. Well,” she went on briskly, “you run back to your father. And tell him, if the morning-room door happens to be open that I wouldn’t say no to a bit of red blotting paper. Mind, out of my way now—while I throw the water!”
“That’s what grows the moss,” thought Arrietty as she sped back to her father, “all the water we empty through the grating. . . .”
Pod looked relieved when he saw her but frowned at the message. “How’s she expect me to climb that desk without me pin? Blotting paper’s a curtain-and-chair job and she should know it. Come on now! Up with you!”
“Let me stay down,” pleaded Arrietty, “just a bit longer. Just till you finish. They’re all out. Except Her. Mother said so.”
“She’d say anything,” grumbled Pod, “when she wants something quick. How does she know She won’t take it into her head to get out of that bed of Hers and come downstairs with a stick? How does she know Mrs. Driver ain’t stayed at home today—with a headache? How does she know that boy ain’t still here?”
“What boy?” asked Arrietty.
Pod looked embarrassed. “What boy?” he repeated vaguely and then went on: “Or may be Crampfurl—”
“Crampfurl isn’t a boy,” said Arrietty.
“No, he isn’t,” said Pod, “not in a manner of speaking. No,” he went on as though thinking this out, “no, you wouldn’t call Crampfurl a boy. Not, as you might say, a boy—exactly. Well,” he said, beginning to move away, “stay down a bit if you like. But stay close!”
Arrietty watched him move away from the step and then she looked about her. Oh, glory! Oh, joy! Oh, freedom! The sunlight, the grasses, the soft, moving air and halfway up the bank, where it curved round the corner, a flowering cherry tree! Below it on the path lay a stain of pinkish petals and, at the tree’s foot, pale as butter, a nest of primroses.
Arrietty threw a cautious glance toward the front doorstep and then, light and dancey, in her soft red shoes, she ran toward the petals. They were curved like shells and rocked as she touched them. She gathered several up and laid them, one inside the other . . . up and up . . . like a card castle. And then she spilled them. Pod came again to the top of the step and looked along the path. “Don’t you go far,” he said after a moment. Seeing his lips move, she smiled back at him: she was too far already to hear the words.
A greenish beetle, shining in the sunlight, came toward her across the stones. She laid her fingers lightly on its shell and it stood still, waiting and watchful, and when she moved her hand the beetle went swiftly on. An ant came hurrying in a busy zigzag. She danced in front of it to tease it and put out her foot. It stared at her, nonplused, waving its antennae; then pettishly, as though put out, it swerved away. Two birds came down, quarreling shrilly, into the grass below the tree. One flew away but Arrietty could see the other among the moving grass stems above her on the slope. Cautiously she moved toward the bank and climbed a little nervously in amongst the green blades. As she parted them gently with her bare hands, drops of water plopped on her skirt and she felt the red shoes become damp. But on she went, pulling herself up now and again by rooty stems into this jungle of moss and wood-violet and creeping leaves of clover. The sharp-seeming grass blades, waist high, were tender to the touch and sprang back lightly behind her as she passed. When at last she reached the foot of the tree, the bird took fright and flew away and she sat down suddenly on a gnarled leaf of primrose. The air was filled with scent. “But nothing will play with you,” she thought and saw the cracks and furrows of the primrose leaves held crystal beads of dew. If she pressed the leaf these rolled like marbles. The bank was warm, almost too warm here within the shelter of the tall grass, and the sandy earth smelled dry. Standing up, she picked a primrose. The pink stalk felt tender and living in her hands and was covered with silvery hairs, and when she held the flower, like a parasol, between her eyes and the sky, she saw the sun’s pale light through the veined petals. On a piece of bark she found a wood louse and she struck it lightly with her swaying flower. It curled immediately and became a ball, bumping softly away downhill in amongst the grass roots. But she knew about wood lice. There were plenty of them at home under the floor. Homily always scolded her if she played with them because, she said, they smelled of old knives. She lay back among the stalks of the primroses and they made a coolness between her and the sun, and then, sighing, she turned her head and looked sideways up the bank among the grass stems
. Startled, she caught her breath. Something had moved above her on the bank. Something had glittered. Arrietty stared.
Chapter Nine
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. A great fringe of lashes came curving down and flew up again out of sight. Cautiously, Arrietty moved her legs: she would slide noiselessly in among the grass stems and slither away down the bank.
“Don’t move!” said a voice, and the voice, like the eye, was enormous but, somehow, hushed—and hoarse like a surge of wind through the grating on a stormy night in March.
Arrietty froze. “So this is it,” she thought, “the worst and most terrible thing of all: I have been ‘seen’! Whatever happened to Eggletina will now, almost certainly, happen to me!”
There was a pause and Arrietty, her heart pounding in her ears, heard the breath again draw swiftly into the vast lungs. “Or,” said the voice, whispering still, “I shall hit you with my ash stick.”
Suddenly Arrietty became calm. “Why?” she asked. How strange her own voice sounded! Crystal thin and harebell clear, it tinkled on the air.
“In case,” came the surprised whisper at last, “you ran toward me, quickly, through the grass . . . in case,” it went on, trembling a little, “you came and scrabbled at me with your nasty little hands.”
Arrietty stared at the eye; she held herself quite still. “Why?” she asked again, and again the word tinkled—icy cold it sounded this time, and needle sharp.
“Things do,” said the voice. “I’ve seen them. In India.”
Arrietty thought of her Gazetteer of the World. “You’re not in India now,” she pointed out.
“Did you come out of the house?”
“Yes,” said Arrietty.
“From whereabouts in the house?”
Arrietty stared at the eye. “I’m not going to tell you,” she said at last bravely.
“Then I’ll hit you with my ash stick!”
“All right,” said Arrietty, “hit me!”
“I’ll pick you up and break you in half!”
Arrietty stood up. “All right,” she said and took two paces forward.
There was a sharp gasp and an earthquake in the grass: he spun away from her and sat up, a great mountain in a green jersey. He had fair, straight hair and golden eyelashes. “Stay where you are!” he cried.
Arrietty stared up at him. So this was “the boy”! Breathless, she felt, and light with fear. “I guessed you were about nine,” she gasped after a moment.
He flushed. “Well, you’re wrong, I’m ten.” He looked down at her, breathing deeply. “How old are you?”
“Fourteen,” said Arrietty. “Next June,” she added, watching him.
There was silence while Arrietty waited, trembling a little. “Can you read?” the boy said at last.
“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.”
Arrietty stared up at him: what a monster, she thought, dark against the sky.
“Do you grow out of it?” she asked.
He moved a little and she felt the cold flick of his shadow.
“Oh yes,” he said, “it wears off. My sisters were bilingual; now they aren’t a bit. They could read any of those books upstairs in the schoolroom.”
“So could I,” said Arrietty quickly, “if someone could hold them, and turn the pages. I’m not a bit bilingual. I can read anything.”
“Could you read out loud?”
“Of course,” said Arrietty.
“Would you wait here while I run upstairs and get a book now?”
“Well,” said Arrietty; she was longing to show off; then a startled look came into her eyes. “Oh—” she faltered.
“What’s the matter?” The boy was standing up now. He towered above her.
“How many doors are there to this house?” She squinted up at him against the bright sunlight. He dropped on one knee.
“Doors?” he said. “Outside doors?”
“Yes.”
“Well, there’s the front door, the back door, the gun room door, the kitchen door, the scullery door . . . and the french windows in the drawing room.”
“Well, you see,” said Arrietty, “my father’s in the hall, by the front door, working. He . . . he wouldn’t want to be disturbed.”
“Working?” said the boy. “What at?”
“Getting material,” said Arrietty, “for a scrubbing brush.”
“Then I’ll go in the side door”; he began to move away but turned suddenly and came back to her. He stood a moment, as though embarrassed, and then he said: “Can you fly?”
“No,” said Arrietty, surprised; “can you?”
His face became even redder. “Of course not,” he said angrily; “I’m not a fairy!”
“Well, nor am I,” said Arrietty, “nor is anybody. I don’t believe in them.”
He looked at her strangely. “You don’t believe in them?”
“No,” said Arrietty; “do you?”
“Of course not!”
Really, she thought, he is a very angry kind of boy. “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.”
He squatted down on his heels and she felt his breath on her face. “What was it like?” he asked.
“About the size of a glowworm with wings like a butterfly. And it had a tiny little face, she said, all alight and moving like sparks and tiny moving hands. Its face was changing all the time, she said, smiling and sort of shimmering. It seemed to be talking, she said, very quickly—but you couldn’t hear a word. . . .”
“Oh,” said the boy, interested. After a moment he asked: “Where did it go?”
“It just went,” said Arrietty. “When my mother saw it, it seemed to be caught in a cobweb. It was dark at the time. About five o’clock on a winter’s evening. After tea.”
“Oh,” he said again and picked up two petals of cherry blossom which he folded together like a sandwich and ate slowly. “Supposing,” he said, staring past her at the wall of the house, “you saw a little man, about as tall as a pencil, with a blue patch in his trousers, halfway up a window curtain, carrying a doll’s tea cup—would you say it was a fairy?”
“No,” said Arrietty, “I’d say it was my father.”
“Oh,” said the boy, thinking this out, “does your father have a blue patch on his trousers?”
“Not on his best trousers. He does on his borrowing ones.”
“Oh,” said the boy again. He seemed to find it a safe sound, as lawyers do. “Are there many people like you?”
“No,” said Arrietty. “None. We’re all different.”
“I mean as small as you?”
Arrietty laughed. “Oh, don’t be silly!” she said. “Surely you don’t think there are many people in the world your size?”
“There are more my size than yours,” he retorted.
“Honestly—” began Arrietty helplessly and laughed again. “Do you really think—I mean, whatever sort of a world would it be? Those great chairs . . . I’ve seen them. Fancy if you had to make chairs that size for everyone? And the stuff for their clothes . . . miles and miles of it . . . tents of it . . . and the sewing! And their great houses, reaching up so you can hardly see the ceilings . . . their great beds . . . the food they eat . . . great, smoking mountains of it, huge bogs of stew and soup and stuff.”
“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 did bottom-fishing too for bits of marrow until the cook got suspicious through finding bent pins in the soup. Once he was nearly shipwrecked on a chunk of submerged shinbone. 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! And the size of the stock-pot! I mean, there wouldn’t be enough stuff in the world to go round after a bit! That’s why my father says it’s a good thing they’re dying out . . . just a few, my father says, that’s all we need—to keep us. Otherwise, he says, the whole thing gets”—Arrietty hesitated, trying to remember the word—“exaggerated, he says—”
“What do you mean,” asked the boy, “‘to keep us’?”
Chapter Ten
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; she described those far-off days, before her birth, when Pod and Homily had been rich; she described the musical snuffbox of gold filigree, and the little bird which flew out of it made of kingfisher feathers, how it flapped its wings and sang its song; she described the doll’s wardrobe and the tiny green glasses; the little silver teapot out of the drawing-room case; the satin bedcovers and embroidered sheets . . . “those we have still,” she told him, “they’re Her handkerchiefs. . . .” “She,” the boy realized gradually, was his Great-Aunt Sophy upstairs, bedridden since a hunting accident some twenty years before; he heard how Pod would borrow from Her room picking his way—in the firelight—among the trinkets on Her dressing table, even climbing Her bed-curtains and walking on Her quilt. And of how She would watch him and sometimes talk to him because, Arrietty explained, every day at six o’clock they brought Her a decanter of Fine Old Pale Madeira, and how before midnight She would drink the lot. Nobody blamed Her, not even Homily, because, as Homily would say, She had so few pleasures, poor soul, but, Arrietty explained, after the first three glasses Great-Aunt Sophy never believed in anything she saw. “She thinks my father comes out of the decanter,” said Arrietty, “and one day when I’m older he’s going to take me there and She’ll think I come out of the decanter too. It’ll please Her, my father thinks, as She’s used to him now. Once he took my mother, and She perked up like anything and kept asking after her and why didn’t she come any more and saying they’d watered the Madeira because once, She says, She saw a little man and a little woman and now she only sees a little man. . . .”
