Arrietty had wandered through the open door into the sitting-room - the fire had been lighted and the room looked bright and cosy. Homily was proud of her sitting-room: the walls had been papered with scraps of old letters out of waste-paper baskets, and Homily had arranged the handwriting sideways in vertical stripes which ran floor from ceiling. On the walls, repeated in various colours, hung several portraits of Queen Victoria as a girl; these were postage stamps, borrowed by Pod some years ago from the stamp-box on the desk in the morning-room. There was a lacquer trinket-box, padded inside and with the lid open which they used as a settle; and that useful stand-by - a chest of drawers made of match-boxes. There was round table with a red velvet cloth, which Pod had made from the wooden bottom of a pill-box supported on the carved pedestal of a knight from the chess-set.

From 'The Borrowers' by Mary Norton. Text copyright © Mary Norton 1952.
Published in Puffin Books 1958.