Free The Borrowers Aloft by Mary Norton Page A

the idea...."
    But Pod's thoughts were set on graver matters. Every conversation overheard brought day by day an increasing awareness of their fate: to live out the rest of their lives under a barrage of human eyes—a constant, unremitting state of being "seen." Flesh and blood could not stand it, he thought; they would shrivel up under these stares—that's what would happen—they would waste away and die. And people would watch them even on their deathbeds—they would watch, with necks craned and shoulders jostling while Pod stroked the dying Homily's brow or Homily stroked the dying Pod's. No, he decided grimly, from now on there could be but one thought governing their lives—a burning resolve to escape. To escape while they were still in the attic. To escape before spring. Cost what it might, he realized, they must never be taken alive to that house with a wall of glass!
    For these reasons, as the winter wore on, he became irritated by Homily's fussings over details such as the ashpan and Arrietty's unheeding preoccupation with the Illustrated London News.

Chapter Fifteen
    During this period (mid-November to December) several projects were planned and attempted. Pod had succeeded in drawing out four nails that secured a patch of mended floorboard below the kitchen table. "They don't walk here, you see," he explained to his wife and child, "and it's in shadow like." These four stout nails he replaced with slimmer ones from the tin box on the table. The finer nails could be lifted out with ease, and the three of them together could move the board aside. Below, they found the familiar joists and crossbeams, with a film of dust that lay—ankle-deep to them—on the ceiling plaster of the room below. ("Reminds me of the time when we first moved in under the floor at Firbank," said Homily. "I thought sometimes we'd never get it straight, but we did.")
    But Pod's present project had nothing to do with homemaking—he was seeking a way that might lead them to the lath and plaster walls of the room immediately below. If they could achieve this, he thought, there was nothing to stop them climbing down through the whole depth of the house, with the help of the laths within the walls. Mice did it; rats did it; and as he pointed out, risky and toilsome as it was, they had done it several times themselves. ("We were younger then, Pod," Homily reminded him nervously, but she seemed quite willing to try.)
    It was no good, however; the attic was in the roof, and the roof was set fairly and squarely on the brickwork of the main house, bedded and held in some mixture like cement. There was no way down to the laths.
    Pod's next idea was one of breaking a small hole in the plaster of the ceiling below and, with the aid of the swinging ladder made of raffia, descend without cover into whatever room it might turn out to be.
    "At least," he said, "we'd be one floor down, the window will be lower and the door unlocked." First, though, he decided to borrow a packing needle from the tool drawer and make a peephole. This, too, was hazardous: not only might the ceiling crack, but there was bound to be some small fall of plaster onto the floor below. They decided to risk it, however; borrowers' eyes are sharp but tiny: they could manage with a very small hole.
    When at last they had made the hole and to their startled gaze the room below sprang to view, it turned out to be Mr. and Mrs. Platter's bedroom. There was a large brass bed, a very pink, shiny eiderdown, a Turkey carpet, a washstand with two sets of flowered china, a dressing table, and a cat basket. And what was still more alarming, Mrs. Platter was having her afternoon's rest. It was an extraordinary sight to see her vast bulk from this angle, propped against the pillows. Very peaceful and unconcerned she looked, reading a home journal—leisurely turning the pages and eating butterscotch from a round tin. The cat lay on the eiderdown at her feet. A powdery film of ceiling had settled