每天五分钟听经典英文故事,读绘本,磨耳朵。藏在老房子地板下、会借走小东西的迷你一家人,与一个男孩从恐惧走向信任,又在被迫分离中留下一个没有答案的温柔结局。
Kate pushed her needle through the cloth, sewing into an old piece of fabric
Mrs May sat beside her and watched the stitches
Suddenly she remembered something that had happened in this old house, many years ago
Back then, she was still a little girl
Her brother had come home from India to get well, and he stayed in a room in their great-aunt's house
The house was very big
Under the floor, inside the walls, and in the cracks of the fireplace and old furniture, there lived a family of very, very tiny people
They were called the Borrowers
Borrowers never bought anything
They took little bits of things they could use from the big people's house
A needle could be a sword
A lump of sugar could last a long time
A piece of paper could become a tablecloth
As long as the big people didn't notice them, the Borrowers could go on living in the house
But there was one rule that mattered more than anything
Never let a human being see you
The Clock family lived under the kitchen floor
Pod was the father, Homily was the mother, and Arrietty was their daughter
Arrietty was already growing up, but she had never been out borrowing with her father
She had no brothers or sisters, so Pod decided to take her out one night
It was time for her to learn how to survive in the big people's house
That night, Pod pinned a needle to himself and led Arrietty up through the cracks in the wall
They were going to fetch some paper from a room
Pod knew every foothold on the way
But Arrietty couldn't help looking up at the world above the floor
It was a world she had never truly seen before
It was on this trip that the boy saw Arrietty
Terrified, she fled home
When Pod and Homily heard about it, their first thought wasn't to blame her
They were afraid
If a human being knew that Borrowers lived under the floor, that human might drive them away, or even catch them
The family had heard such stories before
Pod's brother, Hendreary, had once been seen by a human, and later his daughter had disappeared
To the Clock family, being seen was never a small thing
But the boy didn't tell on her
Instead, he tried to talk to Arrietty
She wanted to know about the world above the floor, and she wanted someone she could talk to
The boy lived all alone in the house, with no friends of his own age
Little by little, across the floor and through the cracks in the wall, the two of them got to know each other
The boy brought them small pieces of furniture and other useful things
Life became much easier for the Clock family
Pod didn't have to risk going out so often, and Homily had new things to decorate their home
But these gifts also made the family depend more and more on the boy
Arrietty's friendship with him made life easier, and at the same time it brought them closer to being discovered
The boy wanted to introduce the Borrowers to the grown-ups
He believed that once everyone knew they were real, no one would hurt them
But Arrietty understood that the thing the boy found wonderful could be a disaster for the Clock family
She didn't want him treating her home like a secret toy, and she didn't want him deciding how they should live their lives
Before long, the housekeeper, Mrs Driver, noticed that small things kept disappearing
She suspected the boy of stealing, and she began to watch for strange signs
One day she saw a light under the kitchen floor
She lifted the floorboard and at last found the Clock family's home
Mrs Driver didn't see them as a family who lived and felt afraid
She sent for a rat catcher, planning to smoke them out from under the floor and let the hunting dogs finish them
The other people in the house might not have believed every word she said, but danger had already reached the door
The boy knew the Clock family was in trouble, and he tried to save them
He stole the rat catcher's tools and tried to open a way out
The wall boards and the iron grille blocked him
He ran outside and finally pried open the grille that led to the Clock family's home, leaving them a way to escape
But he didn't know whether they could find the way out in time
Mrs Driver took him away, and the car was already waiting
The boy left the house, and he never saw Pod, Homily, or Arrietty again
Many years later, Mrs May brought Kate back to the old house
They went to see the place where the Clock family might have escaped, and they left some small things there
When they came back a few days later, the things were gone
Kate believed the Borrowers had taken them
Mrs May didn't say so for certain
She took out a very small notebook in which the Clock family's story was written
The handwriting was exactly the same as her brother's
Did the people under the floor ever escape
And who wrote that little notebook
Mrs May had no answer
She and Kate went on sewing their cloth
The stitches moved forward, one by one, and the story stayed in that old house, its last page still open

