THE BORROWER

BY: MARY NORTON

CHAPTER 1:

• One day, while Mrs. May and Kate are crocheting a bed quilt, Kate realizes she can't find her
crochet hook, even though she just had it right there.

•Don't you just hate when that happens?

• Uh oh, Mrs. May says, the house must be full of borrowers.

•Not borrowers! Anything but borrowers! We hate those pesky things.

•Hold up. What in the world is "borrower"?

• Kate begs Mrs. May to tell the story of how she first heard of the little people called borrowers
from her brother.

•It seems that in the great big house where Mrs. May's brother was recovering from an illness
he got in India, there was a very big grandfather clock, and below the clock there was a hole.

• That hole was home to three borrowers: Homily, Pod, and little Arrietty.

• Mrs. May tells us that even their names were "borrowed" from humans, who they thought
existed solely so that borrowers could take from them. These little guys sure sound a little too
big for their britches.

• This particular old house was ideal for the borrowers to live in because the mistress of the
house, Great- Aunt Sophy, had been bedridden for the past twenty years, thanks to a nasty
hunting accident, and the only other human beings in the house were Mrs. Driver the cook, and
a grumpy gardener named Crampfurl.
•Dying to hear more? Go on, turn the page. You know you want to.

CHAPTER 2:

• The borrower family lives a sheltered life deep inside the clock. It's just Pod, his wife, Homily,
and their daughter, little Arrietty.

• When we meet the gang, Homily is scolding Arrietty for staring out the grate into the garden
when there is work to be done. Don't you just love how parents always seem to interrupt a good
daydream?
• Arrietty goes to get a potato from the storeroom, but the potato big, and Arrietty so little, shes
to kick it into the kitchen, and it gets all dusty. Gross.

• Homily is not happy. She scolds Arrietty again by telling her how much her poor father risks his
life every time he goes to borrow a potato.

• Really? He risks his life every time?

• Really? He risks his life every time? We guess borrowing is pretty dangerous business...
maybe that's why they live the quiet life inside a time piece.

• And now for a cinematic pan around our surroundings. Pod and Homily furnish their house
with the stuff they "borrow" from upstairs: letters to wallpaper their room, postage stamps to
hang on their wall, and old chess pieces that they use as statues. You seriously need to check
this part out: go on, we'll wait for you.

• Arrietty loves to write in her mini diary, and she allows herself one little line on each page
because she is sure she will never get another. She rereads last year's entry, where she wrote
"mother cross." ("Cross" is old-timey speak for angry or grumpy.)

• For today's entry, she writes: "mother worried." Oh that's why Homily is such a sourpuss
today- she's worried about something. Homily is such a sourpuss today- she's worried about
something. We wonder what?

•Homily calls for Arrietty to close her diary and help her in the kitchen because Pod's running
late tonight.

• The plot thickens…

CHAPTER 3:

• Homily finally lets her daughter in on what is bothering her. It seems that Arrietty broke a
teacup days ago, and Homily hinted that Pod should go "borrow" another from upstairs.

• But now Pod is late and Homily is worried. She's even more upset because they didn't really
need the teacup-they could have drunk out of any regular acorn cup, like anybody else. (Of
course! We drink out of acorn cups all the time.)

•Arrietty tries to console her mother, but doesn't seem to do a great job.

• When Arrietty suggests that she go borrowing herself, Homily totally freaks out. Ain't gonna
happen.
• Arrietty says she never wants her daughter to know what it is like upstairs, because her Uncle
Hendreary, Eggletina's father…

• What? What? Don't stop now, Homily! What happened to Eggletina?

• But Pod comes in, and Homily puts on a smile. Guess we'll have to wait a while for that little
scoop.

CHAPTER 4:

• Pod tells Arrietty to run off to bed, while he tells Homily some pretty bad news.

• He's been "seen."

• Oh no. Not "seen"! Wait a minute- what does he mean? And why is it so bad?

• Doesn't everybody see everybody else all the stinkin' time?

• Pod tells Arrietty to run off to bed, while he tells Homily some pretty bad news.

• He's been "seen."

• Oh no. Not "seen"! Wait a minute- what does he mean? And why is it so bad?

• Doesn't everybody see everybody else all the stinkin' time? with the teacup and saucer, he
was seen by a boy.

• Homily freaks out again, rambling on about how they will have to emigrate-that is, move to a
new land-like Hendreary and his wife Aunt Lupy, who now live in a badger hole with their four
children. That does not sound ideal.

• Homily says she and her cultured and educated daughter could never adjust to eating mice
and nuts and berries and living among the earthworms like the Hendrearys do. Ew.

• Pod tries to calm his wife down by saying that the boy actually helped him get down, and
seemed very gentle. So hey, it's all good in the hood.

• But Homily reminds him that Eggletina was about Arrietty's age when she was snatched by a
cat after Hendreary was seen upstairs. Me-ouch.

• The same thing won't happen to their Arrietty, Pod says, because her cousin Eggletina didn't
know about how dangerous "Upstairs" is.
• When Homily points out that they never actually told their daughter, they decide to tell her
tonight.

• The sooner the better.

CHAPTER 5:

• Have your parents ever put you to bed, but you totally didn't feel like sleeping?

• That's what happens to Arrietty in this chapter. Instead of going to sleep, she overhears
snippets of her parents' conversation, until her mother comes in and asks what she knows
about Upstairs.

•Homily tells Arrietty that Uncle Hendreary needed to emigrate because he was "seen" on April
23, 1892 by a maid.

•Ready for a journey back in time? Here's how it all went down:

•Hendreary was crawling along drawing-room mantel, lookin p liver pill for his wife, Lupy. A new
maid dusted right over him, and he sneezed.

• Not too long of a story, huh? That's because Arrietty, Homily, and even Pod keep interrupting-
telling Arrietty a lot more about her past than she bargained for.

• Let the story continue:

• It seems that Arrietty's family used to be rich. They had a whole suite of walnut furniture from
the dollhouse, and a musical box that played three tunes, including "Clementine" (you know the
one: "Oh, my darlin'..."). And they used to have parties that even the Overmantels were jealous
of.

• Who are these Overmantels? We bet you can figure it out.

• If Arrietty's last name is Clock, so named because her family lives under a clock, where do you
think the Overmantels lived? Perhaps over the mantle in the morning
room?

• Now, the problem with these Overmantels is that they were very lazy. They lived only on
breakfast food, as that was the only meal served in the morning room. Breakfast all day?
Doesn't sound so bad to Shmoop.
• The women were conceited because they kept looking at themselves in the mirror above the
mantel, and the men used to always be drunk, after drinking up what was left in the whiskey
bottles.

•In the end, the Overmantels had to leave because the Master-that's Great-Aunt Sophy to you-
took to her bed, and didn't need the morning room anymore.

• Another family, called the Harpsichords, were a little stuck- up, too, though not as bad as the
Overmantels.

• Arrietty's own Aunt Lupy was a Rain-Pipe before she married Uncle Hendreary, a Harpsichord,
and according to Homily, became rather snooty afterwards.

• Harpsichords lived only on afternoon tea, as that was the only food served in their room
(again, tea and cakes and muffins, jams, and jellies sound pretty awesome to eat all day). But
sometimes they had to live for days on mere crumbs and water out of flower vases.

• So in the end, the Harpsichords had to leave, too.

• Suddenly, Arrietty's parents realize they haven't told her about what happened to Eggletina
yet. No more beating about the bush. Let's hear the full story.

CHAPTER 6:

• Pod finally reveals that all those passageways and gates leading up to their house in the clock
are not just to keep mice and cats out.

They are to keep Arrietty in.

• Say what? Arrietty is pretty peeved to find out she's been a prisoner in her own house.

• Her 'rents spill the beans about her cousin, Eggletina, who went upstairs and was most likely
eaten by a cat.

• Instead of deterring Arrietty, though, this just makes the poor girl jealous of her cousin who
was able to go upstairs at least one time.

• You totally need to check out Arrietty's brave speech to her parents, where she explains that
her cousin had it so much better "Eggletina had brothers and Eggletina had half-brothers;
Eggletina had a tame mouse; [...] and Eggletina did get out-just once!" (6.57). Go on, we'll wait
for you.

There's just one problem.

• Did you ever intend to do something, and wind up doing exactly the opposite? Now you know
how Arrietty's parents feel.

• They meant to tell her the story of her cousin as a warning, but they end up agreeing to let
Arrietty go upstairs and learn how to be a Borrower with her father.

• Homily hopes that giving her daughter a bit more freedom will stop her "hankering" (that's old-
timey talk for "yearning" or deep desire) for upstairs. Good luck with that, Mrs. Clock!

• Something tells us this spunky girl won't stop at an inch-she's going to want to take the whole
mile…

CHAPTER 7:

• Arrietty eagerly awaits the day when she can go upstairs to borrow with her father.

• Finally the happy day comes. See, Homily needs new bristles for a fiber brush, and the only
place to get it is the doormat upstairs. (We hear they're having a two-for-one special).

• Pod teaches his daughter all the tricks of the trade: to wear "light shoes for borrowing" (7.21),
to always have extra borrowing bags, to never shut the gate on your way out, to not let your
mind wander, to keep your eyes on him, and to wait for the all clear signal.

• Arrietty can't believe how amazing the world upstairs is. Sunlight, grass, doormats. What more
could a girl want?

• For the first time she sees the clock that she lives in-and notices that her father is small.

• Okay, so to be fair, pulling bristles out of a doormat isn't very fun, but you know what it is?

• Exploring.

• Arrietty's pop lets her explore a little bit while he picks out the best bits for Homily's brush.

• Sweet.

CHAPTER 8:

• Our gal Arrietty runs to the grate outside her house and calls her mother, giving her quite a
scare. Pod spills the beans that there might be a boy around, but he covers for himself just in
time.
• Arrietty wanders off on her own until she encounters something very glittery. And perhaps
dangerous, too.

• What could it be?

CHAPTER 9:

• Um, how bout an giant eye?

• That's right, Shmoopers. Arrietty has come face to face with a huge human eye. A huge
human eye that belongs to a boy.

• Arrietty is shaking in her little boots, but she stands up to the boy, and soon realizes the boy is
just as afraid of her as she is of him.

• As they chit-chat, we learn that the boy is 10, and Arrietty is 14, a that the boy has just come
from India.

• The boy can't read, and wants Arrietty to read to him.

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The boy at first thinks Arrietty is a fairy, just like the little man he saw carrying a doll's teacup a
while back, but Arrietty explains that that was her father. And she's no Tinkerbell.

Ready to hear what borrowers think about humans? Prepare yourself-this one's a doozy.

• Borrowers think that there aren't many people in the world the boy's size, because it's not
possible- how could there be enough huge chairs for all of them? How would there be enough
food? Humans are dying out, and borrowers just need a few humans alive in order to "keep"
them.

• Are you scratching your head? (And maybe a little angry?)

• The boy is, too.

CHAPTER 10:

• It's time for these two to show their cards.

• Arrietty explains the difficulties and dangers of borrowing from Her (the boy's Great-Aunt
Sophy), and tells the boy that her father sometimes visits Her at night after she's had a bottle of
Madeira wine.

• Of course, Great-Aunt Sophy thinks Pod (and Homily, too, when she comes to visit) are just
drunken hallucinations, but she looks forward to seeing them anyway.

• The boy tells Arrietty that he helped her father take down the teacup, but that he can't tell the
difference between "borrowing" and "stealing," according to Arrietty's definition.

At this point, Arrietty gets pretty feisty and defends her family, as well as all borrowers... until
she realizes that she doesn't know where all of them went, or if they even exist anymore.

• The boy jumps on this opportunity to show her that there are "thousands and millions and
billions and trillions of great, big, enormous people" (10.36), but he's only seen two borrowers.

• It's the borrowers that are dying out, not the humans. And one day, Arrietty will be the only
borrower left in the world.

• Could you pass the Kleenex please? We think Arrietty coul use a whole box full of tissue.p
wipe up her tears. What if she does become the last borrower?

• The boy promises to take a letter to the badger holes where Arrietty's Uncle Hendreary and his
family emigrated, to find out once and for all if more borrowers are alive and well.

In return, Arrietty promises to read to the boy.

• That sounds like a pretty good deal.

CHAPTER 11:

• Arrietty, Homily, and Pod sit down to a delicious shrimp dinner (of course, the shrimp is the
size of a huge pot roast to them).

• Pod tells his wife that he got "a feeling" again. That's a funny sensation he gets when a human
is around. (Oh-he must have "felt" that the boy was near.)

• Arrietty promises she will start to learn how to develop her "feeling," too.

• After eating, Arrietty writes a letter to her Uncle Hendreary (taking great care to hide it from her
mother).

CHAPTER 12:
• Okay, so it's no sweat to write a letter, but delivering it when you are a teeny tiny little
borrower? Pretty difficult.

• Arrietty had been trying to hide the Pretty difficult.

• Arrietty had been trying to hide the letter she wrote to her uncle under the mat for the boy to
pick up for days with no luck, until Homily convinces Pod to go borrowing again for some
blotting paper.

Arrietty tags along, slipping the letter under the mat without her father noticing.

• When Arrietty and her pop bring the blotting paper home, Homily freaks out, saying that she he
Mrs. Driver say that the boy h been up and about again, looking desperately under mats in the
hall for something.

• We think we know what he was looking for.

• Arrietty does too, and is heartbroken, because she thinks the boy will never think to check
under the mats again, since he looked for so many days in a row and came up empty.

• Here comes the part where Arrietty lies to her parents, which Shmoop most definitely does not
recommend.

• Every evening she stands on a stool in her kitchen, pretending to practice getting "a feeling."
But really, she's eavesdropping on Mrs. Driver's conversations with Crampfurl.

• This particular evening, she overhears them drinking Great Aunt Sophy's favorite wine, a
talking about how the boy must have a ferret, because he keeps running around in the fields
poking his head in badger holes, looking for something all day.

• And he keeps calling some name that sounds like "uncle."

• Could it be he got the letter and is Could it be he got the letter and is looking in the badger
holes to deliver it to Arrietty's Uncle Hendreary?

CHAPTER 13:

• Arrietty is bent on seeing the boy to find out what happened, and whether her uncle is all right.
This girl most definitely does not want to be the last of the Mohicans-er borrower.

• Homily mentions in an offhand kind of way that Pod has gone borrowing, and won't be back for
an hour and a half.
• Wait a chicken pickin' minute. A whole hour and a half with the gates left open?

• Arrietty quickly brightens up and tells her mother that she is "going to the store room" for a bit,
but she really makes a beeline for upstairs.

• Along her way to the boy's bedroom, she hears her father talking with Great-Aunt Sophy-a
voice she likes very much because it is as comforting and steady as the sound of the clock in
the hall.

• She runs into the boy's bedroom and finds out that not only has the boy delivered the letter,
but he has also brought it back with a reply message from her uncle!

• Man, this is pretty speedy messaging, for pre-texting days.

• The boy is helping her read her uncle's atrocious spelling in the letter, which says to "tell your
Aunt Lupy to come home," when they are spotted-by Arrietty's father, Pod.

• Boy is Arrietty ever in trouble now.

CHAPTER 14:

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Pod gives Arrietty the silent treatment until they get home, when all craziness breaks loose.

• Homily and Pod are devastated that Arrietty has been hanging out with a human behind their
backs, and Pod tells his daughter that "human beans" (a.k.a. "human beings") are not to be
trusted.

• And, of course, now they're in grave danger.

• Arrietty tries to defend herself b telling her parents that the bow helping her get in touch with
her uncle in order to save the race of borrowers.

• Instead of helping matters, the news from the letter only makes things worse-Aunt Lupy is
missing and no one knows what to do.

• Yikes. Things look pretty dark for our borrowers…

CHAPTER 15:

• That night, Homily and Pod talk for hours while Arrietty is in bed.
• Homily suddenly decides that they might be "seen" at any minute by a human. And of course
she does not want to be caught with her curlers in her hair, so she decides to put them in right
then and there.

• Poor tired Homily.

• And it only gets worse. Homily has that old familiar feeling...

• Suddenly, the roof lifts off their house.

It's the boy. Dun dun dun.

• Homily screams, and Pod slaps her on the back. (Come on, Pod, that wasn't called for.)

• The poor woman is scared, embarrassed, and beyond mad.

• Erupting in anger, Mrs. Clock screams for the boy to put the roof back on their house.

• But then something interesting happens.

• The boy has brought a gift: a beautiful doll's house dresser with cabinets below... and Homily
likes it (the woman does have taste).

• And she wants more.

• The boy tells them he'll bring them lots of furniture and carpets and cooking pans and even a
birdcage from the dollhouse, if the borrower family would like it.

CHAPTER 16:

• And so begins a beautiful friendship of borrowing-every day the boy brings beautiful furniture
from the doll's house to decorate the borrowers' home.

• Homily could not be happier-that is, unless there were one of those snooty Overmantels to
invite over to be jealous of all her great swag. • Arrietty has been having a blast, too. The boy
teaches her about the outside world, and she finally has a friend to talk to.

• Even Great-Aunt Sophy seems a little cheerier, because Pod comes to visit her much more
often. Pod uses her bedroom as a kind of escape from all the hard work he's doing for their
newly renovated crib.

• Everything is just ducky until the mean and nasty Mrs. Driver, the cook, realizes that things are
going missing.
• Mrs. Driver feels like someone is trying to pull the wool over her eyes-and she doesn't like it.

• After she's had a sip too many of Sophy's Madeira, she seems convinced that her mistress is
taking things away just to irk Mrs. Driver. Yeah, that's definitely what's happening.

• The mean old cook resolves to catch the thief in the act.

CHAPTER 17:

• Everybody senses Mrs. Driver's growing suspicion and anger, even the boy. Something is
definitely going to go down.

• Dun dun dun.

• One night, she sneaks out of her bed at midnight to follow a flash of candlelight, and sees the
borrowers' home.

• She screams "a nest! A nest! [...] Alive and squeaking!" (17.7), and tells Crampfurl that she
saw a whole bunch of "little people with hands-or mice dressed up..." (17.10).

• When the freaked-out cook and Crampfurl poke around the Borrowers' home, they discover
Great-Aunt Sophy's emerald watch (which the borrower family uses as their clock).

• They decide this is a case for the

police.

• Ruh-roh.

CHAPTER 18:

• The boy is awake in bed, and hears the whole uproar. He had been on his way to the
borrowers' house with a screwdriver when he heard Mrs. Driver exclaim on the stairs and ran
back into his room.

• That was at midnight. Now he hears the clock strike one. It must be safe now to return, right?

• That was at midnight. Now he hears the clock strike one. It must be safe now to return, right?

• The boy rushes to tell the borrowers that it is no longer safe for them to live in their clock, and
that he'll help them escape to the great outdoors.
•Homily can't bear the thought, but Pod knows it's the only way, and Arrietty is super psyched to
live in freedom. Anything's better than a musty old clock, right?

•The boy calms Homily down by saying that he will help them get some supplies of food and
carpets from the dollhouse.

• He decides to carry the family upstairs in a clothespin bag (because Homily says she would
rather die than be carried out in the boy's hands).

• But just as he's loading the family into the bag, Mrs. Driver appears.

• Gulp.

• She accuses the boy of being a thief, just like the little people, but the boy defends them by
saying they are "borrowers," and that he is a borrower, too.

• He begs her to let him move them from the house and not to hurt them.

• No dice.

• Mrs. Driver, who really is not a very nice lady, pushes the boy roughly into his room and locks
him in there, where he cries himself to sleep under the blankets.

CHAPTER 19:

• "And that," says Mrs. May "is really the end" (19.1).

• What? The end of the story? No way! It can't end that way.

• Can it?
• Well, sort of.

• Mrs. May explains to Kate that "stories never really end. They can go on and on and on. It's
just that sometimes, at a certain point, one stops telling them" (19.15).
• Together, they finish the story by imagining how the policeman who comes the next day
doesn't believe Mrs. Driver (it turns out the policeman is a young man named Ernie, who used
to be bullied by Mrs. Driver in his youth).

• He merely thinks she took a few too many sips from Great-Aunt Sophy's bottle of Madeira
wine and was just imagining the little people.

• It does sound kind of crazy when you think about it, doesn't it?
• Mrs. Driver then gets a cat, but the cat "borrows" fish and bowls of egg sauce, instead of
eating the borrowers. They have to get a dog to chase out the cat.

• The mean old lady doesn't give up, though. She hires a rat-catcher named Rich William, a
dangerous man also known as "the pig-killer’who has a "gun, a hatchet, a spade, a pickax, and
a contraption with bellows for smoking things out" (19.41).

• Uh-oh. Have the borrowers met their match?

• Hardly. When Rich William tries to smoke the borrowers out using poisoned fumes, the boy
escapes from his room, grabs a pickax, and bravely knocks a hole in the grating to give the
borrowers some breathing room.

• But are they safe and unharmed?

CHAPTER 20:

• Kate asks the question we're all asking: did the borrowers make it out? Well, did they?

• Mrs. May says she just doesn't know. The boy, her brother, never saw them again because a
cab came to take him away that same day.

• But Mrs. May is confident that they made it out, walked across the fields, and joined the
Hendrearys in the badger sets.

• Kate and Mrs. May imagine that they "had a wonderful life-all that Arrietty had ever dreamed of
[... because] badger sets are almost like villages-full of passages and chambers and
storehouses. They could gather hazelnuts and beechnuts and chestnuts; they could gather
corn... they had honey. They could make elderflower tea and lime tea..." (20.24).

• Mrs. May says she thinks the borrowers use the badger hole as the grand entrance to their
real home near the gas pipe, where they can also cook and get light.

• Hmmm, Mrs. May knows an awful lot about what happened to the borrowers. It almost seems
as though she knows something that we don't...

• Finally, Mrs. May lets the cat out of the bag. She reveals that she went up to the house herself,
where she found Homily's little teapot and Arrietty's diary near a gas pipe.

• She left a bag of goodies for them out overnight. And when she returned, it was gone.

• Hey. That proves the borrowers must have safely escaped, and have set up a new home in
the great outdoors, right?
•Mrs. May smiles and says she's not so sure; in their diary both Arrietty and her brother used to
write their "e's" like little half moons with a stroke in the middle…
• So do the borrowers exist? Or was it just a fantasy Mrs. May's brother created?

• If you've ever lost something that you knew was right there a minute ago, you know the
answer.