Free The Borrowers Afield by Mary Norton Page B

suggested this trip, after all. In for a penny, she decided wanly, in for a pound.
    "Have it your own way," she said resignedly.
    So they clambered through the hedge and into the cornfield.
    And into a strange world (as it seemed to Arrietty) not like the Earth at all: the golden stubble, lit by the evening sun, stood up in rows like a blasted colorless forest; each separate bole threw its own long shadow and all die shadows, combed by the sun in direction, lay parallel—a bizarre criss-cross of light and dark which flicked and fleckered with every footstep. Between the boles, on the dry straw-strewn earth, grew scarlet pimpernel in plenty, with here and there a ripened ear of wheat.
    "Take a bit of stalk, too," Pod advised them. "Makes it easier to carry."
    The light was so strange in this broken, beetle-haunted forest that, every now and again, Arrietty seemed to lose sight of her parents but, turning panic-stricken, would find them again quite close, zebra-striped with black and gold.
    At last they could carry no more and Pod had mercy; they foregathered on their own side of the hedge, each with two hunches of wheat ears, carried head downwards by a short length of stalks. Arrietty was reminded of Crampfurl, back home in the big house, going past the grating with onions for the kitchen; they had been strung on strings and looked like these corn grains and in about the same proportion.
    "Can you manage all that?" asked Pod anxiously of Homily as she started off ahead down the hill.
    "I'd sooner carry it than grind it," remarked Homily tartly, without looking back.
    "There wouldn't be no badgers' sets along this side," panted Pod (he was carrying the heaviest load), coming abreast of Arrietty. "Not with all the plowing, sowing, dogs, men, horses, tractors and what-not—as there must have been—"
    "Where could one be, then?" asked Arrietty, setting down her corn for a moment to rest her hands. "We've been all round."
    "There's only one place to look, now," said Pod. "Them trees in the middle," and standing still in the deep shadow, he gazed across the stretch of pastureland. The field looked in this light much as it had on that first day (could that only be the day before yesterday?). But from this angle, they could not see the trail of dusky shadow thrown by the island of trees.
    "Open ground," said Pod, staring. "Your mother would never make it."
    "I'd go," said Arrietty. "I'd like to go...."
    Pod was silent. "I got to think," he said, after a moment. "Come on, lass. Take up your corn, else we won't get back before dark."
     
    They didn't. Or, rather, it was deep dusk along the ditch of their home stretch and almost dark when they came abreast of their cave. But even in the half-light there seemed something suddenly homelike and welcoming about the laced-up boot.
    Homily sank down at the foot of the bank, between her bunches of corn. "Just a breather—" she explained weakly, "before that next pull up."
    "Take your time," said Pod. "I'll go ahead and unlace the boot." Panting a little, half-dragging his ears of corn, he started up the bank. Arrietty followed.
    "Pod," called Homily from the darkness below, without turning, "you know what?"
    "What?" asked Pod.
    "It's been a long day," said Homily. "Suppose, tonight, we made a nice cup of tea."
    "Please yourself," said Pod, unlacing the neck of the boot and feeling cautiously inside. He raised his voice, shouting down at her: "What you have now, you can't have later. Bring the half scissor, Arrietty, will you? It's on a nail in the storeroom." After a moment, he added impatiently, "Hurry up. No need to take all day, it's just there to your hand."
    "It isn't," came Arrietty's voice, after a moment.
    "What do you mean—it isn't?"
    "It isn't here. Everything else is, though."
    "Isn't there!" exclaimed Pod unbelievingly. "Wait a minute, let me look." Their voices sounded muffled to Homily, listening below; she wondered what the fuss was about.
    "Something or someone's been