Disclaimer: I did not create, nor do I own, Hobbits or the Shire. Tolkien did. Now they belong to his estate and heirs.
(See further disclaimers and explanations in Author’s Notes, if interested.)

“What Child Is This?”

Snap. Crackle.

The embers of the fire hissed and popped as Paladin used the tongs to carefully withdraw the remaining stump of his family’s Yule log.Upon cooling, it would be stored away until used to light a blazing log for next Yule, while the hobbits offered their serenades.

A song, indeed, ran mindlessly through Paddin’s head as he accomplished this Sixth Night task:

“Ilka lassie has her laddie,
Nane, they say, ha’e I...”*

He straightened in the quiet great room of the Whitwell farmhouse and replaced the tongs by the fire. The quality of the darkness was easing as dawn approached.

He sat heavily upon a chair, resting one cheek in his hand and running his fingers idly over the table. Occasional noises -- the murmur of voices or a soft cry -- came through the closed door of his own bedroom a few feet away. On the far side of the smial, his three young daughters lay in a jumbled heap among the guestroom’s bedclothes, sleeping as soundly as they had upon their own beds.

The most recent occupants of that guestroom had departed in the night. Saradoc Brandybuck returned from a hasty dash into the village of Whitwell to bring a healer to the Took family. He then tucked his drowsy lad up in the cart next to him and, with a squeeze of Paladin’s shoulder, set off for Buckland.

Pad’s sister had stayed. It was she who was in the bedroom now with his wife Eglantine and the healer. Waiting. Waiting for... Pad placed both elbows on the table and covered his eyes with his hands.

He could see, behind his eyes, the picture of his daughters as he had left them in the guestroom. Three fine, healthy, sturdy lasses. Within this year, Pearl would mark her fifteenth birthday, Pimpernel her eleventh, and Pervinca her fifth.

Ah, Pervinca. She had been a large babe, even more so than her sisters -- took after their father, they did, his lasses -- and his Eg so small... They had thought there wouldna be another.

And yet, a few short months ago, Eg had let him know she was indeed expecting another babe. Expecting it to be toward the end of Afteryule, she thought, or perhaps even Solmath. Nae so soon. Pad dug the heels of his hands into his face and thought of his wife.

He heard, suddenly, a brief cry that was not his wife’s. Pad lifted his hands from his face to see that shafts of sunlight from the dawn had entered the smial, chasing the gloom away.

Some time later, his sister came into the great room, pushing her hair back wearily from her brow. Pad had heard no more cries.

“Essie, is -- Is she--?” he swallowed around the lump in his throat, gazing at his sister for news.

She crossed quickly to him and squeezed his shoulder. “Eg’s all right, Pad,” she assured him quietly. “She’ll be fine, now. Nae need to worry more over her.”

Paddin closed his eyes in relief, then reopened them quickly as the healer emerged from his bedroom door and beckoned him over.

“Come, then,” she said peremptorily. “Come see your wife and babe.” She ushered him into the room and closed the door behind him.

He stared for a moment at his wife, propped against pillows in their bed. Her eyelids drooped slightly, but her face shone as she crooned to the small bundle lying against her chest.

“Hullo, Pad,” she whispered as she broke off her song, her eyes never leaving the faded blanket.

“Eg!” he sobbed out, his long legs crossing the room in three quick strides to kneel by her side, where he placed his face against her hair. “Oh, Eg, I was so afraid for you! So soon, and so sudden -- and, and after Pervinca!” He gave another slight sob.

Eglantine reached one hand up and smoothed his curls. “’Tis all right,” she assured him. “This one, well, just sort of slipped out quickly!” She gave a tired giggle, then continued as he withdrew his face from her curls and stared at her in disbelief, “’Twill be a bit uncomfortable for me for a while, but I shall be fine, truly. But, Pad,” she put her hand to his cheek and her voice became more solemn, “This babe truly will be the last.”

Their eyes held for a long moment, and then Paladin finally dropped his gaze to the blanket-wrapped bundle upon his wife’s chest.

“So,” he asked, making an effort to force his normal cheer back into his tone, “What’s it to be, then? Petal or Posy?”

Eg yawned and shifted,holding the babe out to her husband. “Oh, why don’t you decide, since this is to be the last?” she asked. “See which name fits.”

Pad laughed. “I thought you always said it takes a lass to name a lassie,” he chided.

“Oh, well, you know what my feelings are,” Eg said from where she had settled against the pillows.

Pad had taken from her the babe, wrapped securely in a faded pink blanket that had belonged to each of the older lasses in turn. He did indeed know his wife’s thoughts that the youngest hobbitess in the family should have a name that was especially sweet. She had narrowed it down to “Petal” or “Posy,” but could not decide between the two.

Pad took his first look at his youngest child and felt suddenly disconcerted. There was something a bit -- off -- about this lass.

Not that he was displeased to find his wife’s features repeated. On the contrary, he found her sharp nose and chin, gentled as they were by her sweet nature, to be quite attractive. The other lasses, for the most part, had favored him in looks. Still, he had not known Eg when she was younger. Perhaps it had taken her time to grow into her beauty.

The babe shifted slightly in his arms and made a sound like “pffth” as the tongue parted the lips. Pad pushed back one of the sparse curls that had dried directly over the tip of a tiny ear.

“Be sure to check all the fingers and toes and such, then,” Eg murmured from where she lay with half-lidded eyes.

Paladin drew most of the blanket aside and pulled out a foot.

Oh, dear. He certainly hoped she grew into these as well. His first three lasses, while tall for their ages, had the nicely proportioned feet that a hobbit would find attractive. This youngest one, however, might be the tiniest babe Pad had ever cradled in his arms -- but the foot he held certainly was not. It looked to be near as big as Pimpernel’s had been at the time of her birth.

Pad steeled himself as he unwrapped the rest of the blanket. He did not notice the small, secret smile on Eg’s face as she watched him.

As he finished unwrapping the blanket, Paladin came to a sudden realization.

“Well?” Eg asked finally, after a long moment of silence, the smile still playing about her lips. “Which name is it to be, then?”

“Peregrin,” Paladin breathed out, not truly in response to Eg’s question but because it was the one word echoing through a mind that had suddenly gone still. His green eyes were fixed on the lad babe in his arms as he repeated, “Peregrin Took.”

It was the name he had first thought to use fifteen years ago. As the years passed and it became clear his children would be lasses, he had tucked that dream away. Now, the sight of his lad reawakened in Pad the hopes he had once had for the future.

“He’s to be the Thain, Eg,” he whispered, stroking a finger gently along a cheek as the babe gurgled. “The Thain of the Shire.”

Paladin himself was in line to be Thain after his older cousin Ferumbras. Despite Rumby’s continued entreaties for him to remove the family to the Great Smials -- Rumby was pleading the weaknesses of age more and more frequently -- Paladin had thought he cared little for the position, or its succession. He and Eg had frequently joked about how it was likely for the Thain to come from a different descendant of the Old Took with each passing generation.

But now, Pad found that he did care about the succession. Very much indeed.

He lifted his son above his head and, with a face that shone with joy, whispered, “Thain Peregrin.”

The lad screwed up his face, opened his mouth -- and sneezed.


_______ *from “Coming Through the Rye” by Robert Burns