The Borrowers Afloat Read Online Free

and the young boy with him. Yes, it's dry," he repeated, looking about him, "and warm."
    "Not very," said Homily. As she followed him through the doorway, she saw that the door was hung by the canvas binding that Hendreary had not cut through. "Soon fray, that will," she remarked, swinging the panel to and fro, "and then what?"
    "I can stitch it," said Pod, "with me cobbler's thread. Easy." He laid his hands on the great stones of the farther wall. "'Tis the chimney casing," he explained. "Warm, eh?"
    "Um," said Homily, "if you lean against it."
    "What about if we sleep here—right against the chimney?"
    "What in?" asked Homily.
    "They're going to lend us beds."
    "No, better keep the chimney for cooking." Homily ran her hands across the stones and from a vertical crevice began to pick out the plaster. "Soon get through here to the main flue...."
    "But we're going to eat downstairs with them," Pod explained. "That's what's been arranged—so that it's all one cooking."
    "All one cooking and all one borrowing," said Homily. "There won't be no borrowing for you, Pod."
    "Rubbish," said Pod. "Whatever makes you say a thing like that?"
    "Because," explained Homily, "in a cottage like this with only two human beings, a man and a boy, there aren't the pickings there were back at Firbank. You mark my words: I been talking to Lupy. Hendreary and the two elder boys can manage the lot. They won't be wanting competition."
    "Then what'll I do?" said Pod. A borrower deprived of borrowing—especially a borrower of Pod's standing? His eyes became round and blank.
    "Get on with the furniture, I suppose."
    "But they're going to lend us that."
    "Lend us!" hissed Homily. "Everything they've got was ours!"
    "Now, Homily—" began Pod.
    Homily dropped her voice, speaking in a breathless whisper. "Every single blessed thing. That red velvet chair, the dresser with the painted plates, all that stuff the boy brought us from the dollhouse..."
    "Not the keyhole stove," put in Pod, "not that dining table they've made from a doorplate. Not the—"
    "The imitation leg of mutton, that was ours," interrupted Homily, "and the dish of plaster tarts. All the beds were ours, and the sofa. And the palm in a pot.... And they got your hatpin, over behind the stove. Been poking the fire with it most likely. I wouldn't put it past them...."
    "Now listen, Homily," pleaded Pod, "we've been into all that, remember. I'll take back the hatpin—that I will take—but findings keepings, as they say. Far as they knew we was dead and gone—like as we might be lost at sea. The things all came to them in a plain white pillowcase delivered to the door. See what I mean? It's like as if they was left them in a will."
    "I would never have left anything to Lupy," remarked Homily.
    "Now, Homily, you've got to say they've been kind."
    "Yes," agreed Homily, "you've got to say it."
    Unhappily she gazed about her. The cardboard floor was scattered with lumps of fallen plaster. Absent-mindedly she began to push these toward the gaps where the floor, being straight-edged, did not fit against the rough plaster. They clattered hollowly down the hidden shaft into Lupy's kitchen.
    "Now you've done it," said Pod. "And that's the kind of noise we mustn't make, not if we value our lives. To human beings," he went on, "droppings and rollings means rats or squirrels. You know that as well as I do."
    "Sorry," said Homily.
    "Wait a minute," said Pod. He had been gazing upwards toward the crack of light, and now in a flash he was on the laths and climbing up toward it.
    "Careful, Pod," whispered Homily. He seemed to be pulling at some object that was hidden from Homily by the line of his body. She heard him grunting with the effort.
    "It's all right," said Pod in his normal voice, beginning to climb down again. "There isn't no one up there. Here you are," he went on as he landed on the floor and handed her an old bone toothbrush, slightly taller than herself. "The first borrowing," he announced