Arrietty wraps herself in her quilt and comes to the living room, eager to hear what her parents have been talking about, as she was only able to catch a few stray words through the wall. They tell her that many years ago, Uncle Hendreary was spotted by a maid while walking across the drawing room mantlepiece—a very visible part of a heavily traveled room—in search of a liver pill for his wife, Lupy. This incident started a chain of events that caused every Borrower family except the Clocks to leave the house and drove the Clocks deep into hiding. Homily explains that the only reason they have been able to stay is due to Pod’s skilled borrowing techniques, which allow him to move about the house undetected.

Previously, there had been several Borrower families living in the house, each with their own way of life. Even their family names were based upon the rooms in which they built their hidden homes. The Overmantles, who are described as being somewhat pretentious due to the elevated social status of living behind the fancy mantelpiece, resided in the morning room and subsisted only on breakfast foods and tobacco. The Harpsichords, whom Homily describes as changing their name from Linen-Press in order to sound more upper-class, lived on food gleaned from the humans’ meal at afternoon tea.