借东西的小人|The Borrowers经典英文绘本

借东西的小人|The Borrowers

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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