For Arrietty, the cowshed but a means to an end. Yes, she would need something to cover up with at night, and she didn't want to think about what she would do when it rained - but more importantly, she wanted to go somewhere! She wanted to try out this new huge stride of hers, to walk over instead of under the grass, to feel the wind -
Shplut. She looked down to find her foot in the middle of a fresh cow patty. Well, she consoled herself, before this morning she would have drowned in it. Wouldn't that have been a lovely way to go.
The field was a thousand new sights today, a thousand things she had never seen. Birds were jewel-like, the size of her hand, where before they had been like living clouds. Flowers were puffs and speckles of color instead of enormous veined bells and petals. Insects were so small that she had to squint to see the rolly-pollies around her feet. Weasels stared and then ran when they saw her, instead of the other way around. And the ravens scolded and clung to the fence, but they didn't attack her.
There was only one bad thing about this marvelous walk, and that was that she was making it in her pajamas. Wearing her Borrowing dress had been simply out of the question. Knowing this, she had still pulled it out of the bureau (now slightly crooked from having supported her hand at one point) and held it up, pathetically small, against her chest. Hopefully no one had seen that. Her boots were likewise still miniature. Only her pajamas had grown along with her, presumably because she'd been wearing them at the time. And so, without her boots or her Borrowing dress, she felt terribly unprepared for the world. She was a Borrower without her equipment.
But, she reminded herself, she was still a Borrower. And there was nothing else to be done except sit down and snivel, and that wasn't Arrietty's way. So she wiped the bits of cow patty off on the grass and kept going.
The cow shed didn't look as promising close up as it had from across the field. The boards were so weathered that the cracks were two or three inches wide, and peppered with empty knotholes that could fit two Borrowers at a go - three, if they were as thin as Homily. She could peek through the knotholes and see through the shed to the pump on the outside of the opposite wall. A cupboard in this condition rarely held food, and the Borrower in Arrietty wanted to turn around and try somewhere else - but, she had to remind herself, she wasn't looking for food.
There was a padlock on the door. But the latch was so eaten with rust that Arrietty, after a calculating look, eased its screws straight out of the wood and laid it, in the manner of the Borrowers (who never damage anything) in one piece on the grass.
The inside was slotted with sunlight falling through the cracks, so she had no great difficulty seeking except when a sunbeam jumped straight in her eyes. There was a box of tools, a sealed crate, a first aid kit. Aha! Here, a stack of moth-eaten blankets folded on a shelf next to a pile of rags, and two buckets, and a large bottle of iodine. Arrietty didn't know that the men who kept the cows used these things to take care of newborn calves. She sniffed the iodine and wrinkled her nose, then peeled a blanket off the bottom of the stack. It wasn't as dusty as the one on top.
There was no umbrella, to her disappointment. She took a bucket instead. It felt a bit awkward compared to normal Borrowing; a Borrower never took half of a hundredth of something, let alone one of two. But there was no other option except take to take nothing. She couldn't cut the bucket into pieces. Anyway, she promised herself, she would bring it back as soon as she no longer needed it. When that might be, she didn't know, but it eased her conscience.
Then her eyes caught on something on the wall. It was small, weatherproof, shiny. It looked out of place in the shed. Someone had been taking care of it. It was a small wooden cupboard screwed firmly into a support post.
She ran her fingers along the top of the cupboard door; dust, but not as much as on the blanket pile. Someone had used it more recently. Cautiously, she swung the cupboard open. She was rewarded by the dull gleam of plastic and a three-by-three row of square buttons.
She was looking at a telephone.