Now that there was no longer any action to distract her, she suddenly felt very shy. It made her wonder at herself. She had never been this insecure around Spiller before. What had changed? She lifted her chin a little to look at him and found him, still crouched down, staring up at her. His gaze travelled down, until his eyes rested on her boots.

"Good boots", he said and smiled.

Arrietty felt the corners of her mouth curl up as well and stated, as if it wasn't obvious: "My father made them for me." After a thought she added: "I wanted boots like yours."

At his raised eyebrows and curious question 'why?' she suddenly remembered a small talk she'd had with her mother. In a rather uncommon, but genius stroke of foresight, Homily had sat her daughter down to speak of boys. It was not long after they'd met Peagreen.

"Here's the thing with those young men," Homily'd begun, her hands a steady going back and forth with the knitting needles, "sometimes you have to give them a little nudge in the right direction."

Arrietty, busy herself with some needlework, placed it on her knees and eyed her mother questioningly: "A nudge?"

"Yes, you see, when I met your father, I saw immediately what a great borrower he would one day become. But although he had a great wit, I needed to give him a slight push. To make him see things my way, you see?"

Arrietty didn't.

"Well," Homily began to feel a little heated, her hands moved faster. She was not used to talking of those private affairs. "It's the talking, you see, men talk differently; they boast and chatter enough about work and borrowing and stuff, but when it comes to emotions, they just ... well, they can't."

So out of sorts Homily was by now, that she made a mistake in her knitting and decided to rescue the piece by leaving it altogether.

Her daughter had been watching quite intensively and she knew she had to get it al out now, or she'd never find the nerve again.

"You see, when I saw your father, I knew he lived under the clock and in those days we would only meet everybody on high days, such as Christmas. Of course I didn't want to wait a whole year, so I mastered my nerves, stepped up to him and said ... I said ..." Here, Homily faltered.

Arrietty attributed it to memory problems. After all, this had been a long time ago, seeing she herself was seventeen by now.

Yet, it was not memory problems, Homily simply wondered at herself, how she ever managed to be so bold in the first place. Her daughter, with all her carefree walkabouts and plain thinkings, was more like herself than she had believed. Didn't she once say she would marry Spiller, just because the boy would be too shy to admit anything himself? Well then, Homily instantly felt more relieved, and more at ease she finally continued: "I said: Pod, I like you, I think we'll make a good team, please come and visit me." She heaved a deep, contented sigh. "You know, finding a partner for life is all about balancing strengths and weaknesses. You get to know theirs and they get to know yours and if it's a good match ... well ... there you have it."

At the time Arrietty hardly grasped the meaning of this bit of awkward wisdom, yet now, seeing Spiller's intense gaze, as he waited for her reply, she understood. She knew his strengths and weaknesses and she found they matched hers splendidly, so now she had to tell him.

She swallowed a lump, cleared her throat and said, her voice only a little wavering: "Well, it's for when you'd want me to come with you, one day."

Spiller didn't immediately reply to this. His eyes widened a bit and he stood up straight. By now he towered a full head over her and she had to look up.

After a silent few minutes he simply nodded once and took her hand.

Through a dark tunnel—probably dug by a rabbit once—carrying a stump of a candle in his other hand, Spiller led the way, guiding Arrietty through a maze that ultimately brought them right up to the bank where his boat lay waiting. Carefully hidden behind an overflowing butterbur.

As he helped her into the boat, Arrietty thought about her parents, about if this was how it had gone with them; if Pod had taken Homily by the hand and simply brought her with him to the house underneath the clock.

Oh, she knew all about weddings and promises and witnesses and such, yet somehow she couldn't see Spiller in front of such a crowd and in some fancy suit.

As Spiller used the large yellow knitting needle to push the boat a little away from the edge, she smiled. And later, as they sat next to each other beside a small fire in a cave like hollow, somewhere along the riverbank, she laid her head contently on his shoulder. She would never be a house borrower like her mother. Spiller would teach her everything and take her places she'd never seen before.

As for Spiller, though silently contented, inside his head there were many thoughts. Even though he didn't know as many big words as Arrietty did—he had a great deal of respect for her learned mind—he knew enough of the workings of borrower life. He observed and learned in his own quiet way.

He had looked at Pod and Homily, at Hendreary and Lupy and at all the other borrower families he knew that lived around the villages, and he understood.

As he felt Arrietty's curls brush against his chin, a deep calm washed over him. He placed his cheek against her head and together they looked out into the world they would discover.

The end