The Borrowers Afield by Mary Norton

Author:Mary Norton
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 0101-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

“I wouldn’t touch it,” cried Arrietty indignantly. She rose to her feet, brushing down her skirt. “Poor thing,” she said, referring to the field mouse, “and I think you’re horrid,” she said, referring to him.

“Who isn’t?” remarked Spiller, and reached above his head for his quiver.

“Let me look,” begged Arrietty, turning back, suddenly curious.

He passed it to her: it was made, she saw, of a glove finger—the thickish leather of a country glove; the arrows were dry pine-needles, tipped with black-thorn.

“How do you stick the thorns to the shaft?” she asked.

“Wild plum gum,” replied Spiller.

“Are they poisoned?” asked Arrietty.

“No,” said Spiller. “Fair’s fair. Hit or miss. They got to eat—I got to eat. And I kill ‘em quicker than an owl does. Nor I don’t eat so many.” It was quite a long speech for Spiller. He slung his quiver over his shoulder and turned away. “I’m going,” he said.

Arrietty scrambled quickly down the bank. “So am I,” she told him.

They walked along in the dry ditch together. Spiller, she noticed, as he walked glanced sharply about him: the bright black eyes were never still. Sometimes, at a slight rustle in grass or hedge, he would become motionless: there would be no tensing of muscles—he would just cease to move. On such occasions, Arrietty realized, he exactly matched his background. Once he dived into a clump of dead bracken and came out again with a struggling insect.

“Here you are,” he said and Arrietty, staring, saw some kind of angry beetle.

“What is it?” she asked.

“A cricket. They’re nice. Take it.”

“To eat?” asked Arrietty, aghast.

“Eat? No. You take it home and keep it. Sings a treat,” he added.

Arrietty hesitated. “You carry it,” she said, without committing herself.

When they came abreast of the alcove, Arrietty looked up and saw that Homily, tired of waiting, had dozed off. She was sitting on the sunlit sand and had slumped against the boot.

“Mother—” she called softly from below and Homily woke at once. “Here’s Spiller…” Arrietty went on, a trifle uncertainly.

“Here’s what?” asked Homily, without interest. “Did you get the horse hair?”

Arrietty glancing sideways at Spiller saw that he was in one of his stillnesses and had become invisible. “It’s my mother,” she whispered. “Speak to her. Go on.”

Homily, hearing a whisper, peered down, screwing her eyelids against the setting sun.

“What shall I say?” asked Spiller. Then, clearing his voice, he made an effort. “I got a cricket,” he said. Homily screamed: it took her a moment to add the dun-colored patches together into the shapes of face, eyes and hands; it was to Homily as though the grass had spoken.

“What ever is it?” she gasped. “Oh, my goodness gracious, Arrietty, whatever have you got there?”

“It’s a cricket” said Spiller again, but it was not to this insect Homily referred.

“It’s Spiller,” Arrietty repeated more loudly, and in an aside she whispered to Spiller, “Drop that dead thing and come on up….”

Spiller not only dropped the field mouse but a fleeting echo of some dim, half-forgotten code must have flicked his memory, and he laid aside his bow as well.

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