I comment on Votaries that Mary Norton seems to have abandoned Arrietty's core personality in The Borrowers Avenged. I write,
On the one hand, I can understand Norton wanting to give Arrietty more dating options than the exceedingly uncommunicative Spiller. And the new home offers more to the family than the other homes did. And people, especially teens, do change as they mature.
Arrietty doesn't have to get married. If she does...hey, I always liked Spiller. As I also write,
Arrietty would travel up and down the river with Spiller and their borderline wild kids.
However, I do agree with Norton's desire to give Arrietty options. So I decided, Why not bring back Stainless?
Stainless is a boy of Homily's generation, which means that he is anywhere between 32-40 at the time of The Borrowers Avenged. As a boy, he caught a ride in a basket to the local sweet shop. When he came back, he was completely insouciant about the chaos he caused (everyone was looking for him) but had lost his beautiful complexion due to all the sweets he ate.
I decided that Stainless never loses that tendency to catch rides to places. He ends up in the luggage or coat pocket of a human who goes to a distant town, distant enough that Stainless might as well have gone to Antarctica. When he returns to his home turf many years later, he is older, wiser, quite adept at survival, and still restless. Borrowers get together to hear his reports of his travels. And he brings back objects to trade.
Arrietty would admire him! Maybe she marries him. Maybe he married and had a son, and she marries the son. Maybe, because I like to consider all possibilities, he forms a relationship with Spiller, platonic or romantic. Maybe he and Peregrine get together--he writes a book and Peregrine illustrates it.
I like the idea of a larger borrowers' culture beyond the Clocks. And I also want Arrietty to have lots of possibilities, including, of course, Spiller.
I should end by stating that Homily and Pod are one of the best compatible-with-distinct-personalities couples in all literature. Ian Holm and Penelope Wilton (who were a couple at the time) capture them perfectly.
