Mary Norton - Borrowers 05 by The Borrowers Avenged

Author:The Borrowers Avenged
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-06-01T14:31:48+00:00

of borrowers was dying out.” She was thinking of the boy at Firbank.

Peagreen was silent for a moment, and then he said quietly, “That may be so.” Suddenly he seemed to throw such thoughts aside. “But anyway, we’re here now! Come on—I’ll take you back through the old kitchen.”

Chapter Fourteen

Once through the larder door, Arrietty stood still and looked about her. Peagreen came beside her and, in a protective kind of way, slid a hand under her elbow. Before them stretched a stone-flagged passage ending in what looked like an outside door. Beside this, a wooden staircase rose up, with bare, scrubbed treads, under which there seemed to be some kind of built-in cupboard. “Those stairs lead up to their bedroom,” Peagreen whispered, “and other rooms beyond.” Why were they still whispering? Because, thought Arrietty, they both felt themselves to be in some alien part of the house, a part in which the dreaded human beings lived out their mysterious existence.

Along the left-hand side of the passage hung a row of bells on coiled steel springs and, beyond them, some kind of cabinet. She knew what these were. Many a time at Firbank she had heard such bells rung to summon Mrs. Driver.

On the opposite side, facing the bells, were several doors, all closed. Immediately beside them, on their right, another door stood ajar, and opposite it, on their left, a matching door, which had no latch and was secured, Arrietty noticed, by a loop of wire fixed to a nail in the upright.

“What’s in there?” she asked.

“It’s the old game larder,” Peagreen told her. “They don’t use it now.”

“Can I look in?” She had seen that, in spite of the loop of wire, the door was not quite closed.

“If you like,” said Peagreen.

She tiptoed up and peered through the crack, and then she slipped inside. Peagreen followed.

It was a vast, shadowy jumble of a place, lit by a grimy window just below the ceiling, from which, she saw, hung row upon row of hooks. And something else: it looked like a longish log hung, slightly on a slope, on two chains suspended on very stout hooks.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“For hanging venison. You could hang a whole deer on that—with the legs hanging down each side.”

“A whole deer! Whatever for?”

“To eat—as soon as it got a bit smelly.” He thought a moment. “Or perhaps they hung it the other way up with the four legs tied together. I don’t really know: it was all before my time, you see. I only know they had a zinc bath underneath to catch the blood.”

“How horrible!”

Peagreen shrugged. “They were horrible,” he said.

Arrietty shuddered and, turning her eyes away from the deer sling, glanced at several rows of musty antlers that hung against the wall. More dead deer, she supposed, used as hooks for hanging other game. She turned then to examine the jumble of objects on the floor: broken garden chairs, stained dressers, half-used pots of paint or whitewash, an ancient kitchen stove

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