- 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 is so big, and Arrietty so little, she has 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? 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. 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…