Chapter Fourteen: A Girl’s Best Friend

Mmm. Pippin’s nose twitched slightly as he began to wake. Something smelled rather nice, then. His face was lying on something rather soft, too.

“Ah.” A short little sigh escaped him as his eyes blinked open. Immediately, they became round as saucers with the sight that greeted him: the curve of his wife’s bosom.

Pippin instantly stilled any further movements -- except for his eyes. Those, he cautiously raised to peer through his lashes at Diamond’s face, but his curls blocked most of the view. Well, she hadn’t moved at all, nor had she said anything; so likely she was still asleep. He would just lie here quietly for a while and enjoy the view.

Pippin’s eyes had become a tad unfocused again as he allowed himself to drift into daydreams inspired by the fabric stretched taut before his face and the softness beneath his cheek.

Diamond softly cleared her throat before speaking, and Pippin jumped.

He pushed himself up so that the flats of his hands on the bed sheets supported his torso, and blushed as he looked at his wife. “Er, good morning, Diamond,” he said awkwardly.

“Good morning, Pippin,” she responded, then continued calmly on with the thought she had originally been about to voice. “Are you feeling better today?”

Pippin, who had for a few moments forgotten the circumstances of their presence in this room, cocked his head to the side as he took stock. “Why -- yes!” he said in a surprised yet deeply satisfied tone. “And I suppose I have you to thank for it!” He looked at her in admiration, once again, of her healing skills. Pippin was a bit vague on the details of the preceding day, but he did remember asking for Diamond because he knew she could help him feel better -- and she had!

Diamond blushed slightly in response to the praise, and bit her lip as she tilted her face down toward her chest, but she was smiling.

“Only -- er,” Pippin was suddenly awkward again. “I’m sorry about how I woke up this morning -- I mean, the position you were in; I mean, where my head was.” He flushed again. “I--I know you dinna like it to be touched there.” He cast his eyes onto the coverlet and began picking at a thread.

Diamond sighed. “Whyever do you think you should have need to apologize?” she asked. “I placed your head there; it is an excellent way to deliver medicine.”

“You did?” Pippin asked stupidly as Diamond reached into her bodice and withdrew the sachet, showing it to him before setting it aside on the pillows.

“And -- husband,” she added, and it was Diamond’s turn to shift awkwardly, her eyes lowered. “You told me once that, as your wife, I might look upon you, and touch, as I wish. I daresay that, as my husband, you should be able to do the same.”

Pippin, propped upon his elbows now, was staring slack-jawed, his eyes going round again, as Diamond continued with a small smile.

“It is just, you see,” she said with her eyes cast demurely down, “that sometimes you surprise me.”


The late-season snowfall which had developed during the night would have kept the hobbits within the walls of Crickhollow that day even if Pippin hadn’t been hobbling along, clutching at the backs of furniture when he walked.

Still, even hobbling, he was a much more cheerful hobbit than he had been previously. Merry reluctantly added more points in Diamond’s favor to his begrudging reassessment of the lass. Especially when Pippin presented to him as an activity the following option:

“Merry, it’s snowing!”

“Yes, I know, Pip, I--”

“So you can’t go out and walk the river again today, either.”

Merry frowned. “Now why would you think that I--”

“So can we play this new game? Diamond taught me! It’s quite fun, really. All you need is a board and some marbles.”

Merry decided to test the waters a bit more with Diamond. Casting a sidelong glance at her, he responded, in a studied tone, “Really, Pip? I thought you’d lost your marbles long ago.”

Diamond merely continued to smile down at her clacking knitting needles. Pippin curled the edges of his tongue up and stuck it out at his older cousin, then relaxed his face and laughed clearly. “Come on, Merry! ‘Twill be fun!” he said.

As the cousins played at a table set up in Crickhollow’s great room, the snow falling in front of the windows, Diamond sat beside another of the nesting tables which had been pulled out, her knitting in her lap. The mittens of variegated designs she had given to Captain Peregrin’s sisters for Yule had been well-received; perhaps she should make some to send to her relatives in the North Farthing for the next winter.

Estella pulled up a chair on the other side of Diamond’s table, and reached into her mending basket with a sigh. This task seemed to pile up so, and it was really something she ought to be doing on a day like this. She withdrew one of Merry’s weskits and began searching for the right color thread with which to sew the button back on.

“Mistress?” Trefoil whispered after padding nearly silently into the room to stand beside Diamond. “Is there aught else you’d like me to do?”

The tweenager had shaken out and changed the linens on Pippin’s and Diamond’s bed and prepared their dirty clothes for laundering -- Diamond had changed out of the frock she slept in into a new one this morn -- and swept the floor of the bed chamber. Other than that, after she taken her breakfast and washed her dishes, she could not see much else to do.

Crickhollow was “neat as a pin,” as the head maid Bluebell, or Trefoil’s Gran, would say, despite the fact that she seemed to be the only servant here. Brandybucks must place a greater store on such things than the sometimes careless Tooks.

Not that Trefoil was criticizing her employers; oh, no, indeed, sir! She knew that the Tooks were grand, and to work at Great Smials for a time was probably the grandest lot she could ever aspire to, afore returning to her Gran’s smial at Tooksank and giving some other lass a turn.

Trefoil hoped fervently it would never be discovered, her own role in that fiasco with the kitchen lasses who’d been dismissed around Yuletime. Wicked, wicked lasses they were! To ply her with strong drink when she’d never had naught but a few sips of her Gran’s nightly cordial! She knew, somehow, that they’d taken what she’d said, in response to their prying questions about the state of the Heir and Mistress’s bed chamber in the morning, and used it to justify their actions. Trefoil, her inhibitions loosened by the wine, had just been trying to be friendly as Holly and Poplar chattered away to her. That duo of lasses had frequently spurned her company in favor of each other’s.

What business had it been o’ their’n, or her own, for that matter, what the Heir and Mistress did in the privacy of their quarters? They were gentlehobbits, and entitled to do as they liked.

And Trefoil, though she knew it was just happenstance that she’d been the one chosen to accompany Mistress Diamond on this trip, was awed to find herself in the presence of not only her Mistress, and the Heir as well, but also the gentry from Buckland. How proud her Gran would be to hear of it! The old hobbitess could keep the visitors who came to check on her enthralled for a week with the stories she’d weave from the tale!

Diamond cast her eyes about for something to occupy Trefoil. Estella’s housekeeping really did not require any any assistance; it was quite admirable. Her glance did light, however, upon Estella’s full mending basket, and the grim set of her mouth as she wet the thread for the needle which would stitch Merry’s button back on.

“Perhaps,” Diamond said, “you could assist Mistress Brandybuck with her mending.”

Estella looked up, startled, and nearly dropped the button she was holding to the weskit. “Oh, no, that really isn’t necessary,” she protested, her glance going back and forth between Diamond and Trefoil. “You needn’t make her do that.”

“Nonsense,” Diamond replied. She set aside her knitting and reached for the basket herself. “We shall both help you,” she smiled at Estella, “and the work shall be done in a trice.”

“You really don’t have to,’ Estella said halfheartedly, as she saw her giant pile of mending being divided into three rather manageable stacks -- two of which she wouldn’t have to touch.

Diamond smiled again as she carefully avoided any of Merry’s clothing articles that were in the stack and reached for one of Estella’s torn petticoats instead. “Friends should help each other,” she said.

Trefoil sat in a chair pushed slightly back from the hobbitesses’ table, working quickly, neatly and quietly at the stitching. To one side, Diamond did the same, a soft smile playing occasionally about her lips as she glanced toward the hobbits’ game. Estella, on the other side of the table, frowned and pricked her finger with a needle more than once as her attention wandered. She, too, was uncharacteristically quiet for a time.

“There! So you see, Merry, my marble’s in control of the point of your star, now, so I’ve won! ‘Tisn’t it fun to learn a new game?”

“Hmm,” Merry responded noncommittally as he studied the arrangement in front of him. It hadn’t actually been a board they’d needed, when Pippin had explained the basics of the game to him, but a large roll of parchment spread out on the table and weighted down on the corners. Upon the parchment, Pip had drawn six triangles filled with dots, upon each of which could be placed a marble, he explained. The idea of the game was to move one’s own marbles across the board in such a way that one of your marbles took possession of the star point which was the “home” of one of your opponent’s colors.

“Don’t you think it would be a good idea to have a board, though?” Merry asked. “You could carve out some gouges for the marbles, so there wouldn’t be any danger of them rolling out of play and fouling up the game.”

Pippin shrugged indifferently. “This is the first time I’ve played with a board at all, Merry. When Diamond and I played--” he looked toward his wife, who seemed to be blushing a bit as she bent over Estella’s sewing, and Pippin grinned widely as he turned back to Merry, “When Diamond taught me, we didn’t have a board a’tall. Come on, let’s play again, now that you know how!”

Pippin reached to retrieve one of his gray marbles from the point of Merry’s triangle, and the side of his hand brushed several other pieces upon the table, scattering, green, gray, yellow and white marbles across the floor in a patter of sounds.

“Gouges,” Merry sighed as he hoisted himself away from the table and then knelt to begin picking them up. Estella’s mind flashed back onto all the sorts of messes she was not regularly cleaning up now that Pippin no longer lived with them. Trefoil looked to her Mistress for guidance in whether she should assist with this task. Diamond did not catch her eye, though; in fact, she was shaking with suppressed laughter.

Pippin, still grinning, slightly twitched his injured ankle upon the footstool where it rested before turning to face the lasses’ table.

“So, then -- Trefoil, ‘tis it?” he asked in a jolly mood as his eyes fell upon that lass.

She gulped nervously and raised her eyes to meet his. Captain Peregrin had never had occasion to address her directly before. “Aye -- aye, sir?” she rasped out.

“I see you’re handy with a needle as well as a -- er -- broom,’ he said, naming the first instrument of housekeeping that popped into his head.

“I -- I try, sir,” Trefoil answered, her heart pounding wildly. Gran would feast on such praise, from the Heir himself! “O’ course,” she hastily added with a bob of her head, “’tis Mistress Diamond as directs the runnin’ of things to keep it neat and orderly at the Smials, sir.”

This earnest statement seemed to produce a strangled little coughing fit from Estella, while Pippin turned his beam onto his wife for a moment.

“Yes, of course she does,” he said in frank admiration, and Diamond basked in the glow as he added, “Mistress Diamond has many talents.”

Merry stared open-mouthed at Pip as he stood to place a handful of marbles upon the table, then shook his head as he crouched to retrieve a few more that had rolled farther away. Daft, that’s what his cousin was. Daft to be carrying on so about his wife, when just the day before yesterday he’d -- well, Pip hadn’t really said he wasn’t happy with her. Merry frowned to himself as he knelt upon the floor. But what had brought on this sudden giddiness in relation to his wife? And what in the Shire was Pip doing in his conversation with the servant lass? It was almost as if he were matchm---

“But we were speaking of your talents,” Pippin continued s he turned back to Trefoil. “I’m sure there’s many a hobbit as would appreciate someone who can turn out both a fine smial and a fine seam.”

“Aye -- aye, sir,” Trefoil answered again, growing anxious now. “Thank’ee, sir.” Was it possible that the kitchen lasses hadn’t been at fault, but had been charmed into a compromising position?

She glanced quickly at Diamond, whose fingers had stilled and whose eyes were now fixed upon her unmoving needle.

“Watch yourself, cousin,” Merry muttered softly as he crawled slightly beneath the table where Pippin sat.

Pippin ignored him and went blithely on. “’Bert, for instance,” he said with exaggerated casualness. “ He seems a hobbit who would appreciate a lass with such skills as yours.”

“Bert, sir?” Trefoil echoed uncertainly, glancing again at Diamond. The Mistress had unfrozen and was again deftly plying her needle, another smile about her lips.

“Aye,” Pippin expanded, waving a hand so that Merry, leaning forward to place the last of the errant marbles upon the table, lunged forward to cover the piles with his palms before they could be knocked off again. “He’s the hobbitservant in our part of the Smials, you know,” Pippin continued. “Quite a strong lad, really. Wouldn’t you say so, Diamond?”

“Oh, yes, husband,” Diamond answered carefully. “Bert has been most helpful to me in lifting such things as I cannot.” She deliberately did not look at Pippin, except for a brief glance, during this last statement.

Pippin looked oddly at his wife, who seemed to be quivering after this statement, but he shrugged it off and continued. “I suppose he is handsome as well. Would you say Bert is handsome, Diamond?”

“I really wouldn’t know, Pippin,” Diamond said softly. “I had not noticed.”

Pippin felt a small strum of satisfaction at this answer from his wife, yet he set it aside for the moment. “Trefoil?” he asked. “What do you think?”

“I--I’m afraid I had not noticed either, sir,” she stated. Bert? Handsome? It had never occurred to her to wonder: she really didn’t consider him her type.

“Well, take a look when you get back to the Smials, why don’t you?” Pippin suggested.

“Aye -- aye, sir,” Trefoil answered and swallowed again.

“Good,” Pippin nodded, satisfied, and turned back to the table where Merry was arranging the marbles in playing order for the start of another game.

“Leave the lass alone!” Merry hissed through clenched teeth. “Have you gone ‘round the bend?”

Pippin cheerfully stuck his tongue out at Merry again and began stacking his own marbles upon his triangles.

Merry already had Estella, just as Pippin had Diamond. She’d expressed a willingness for more physical affection that morning, and it was obvious by the way she tended him that she really did care for him!’Twas indeed fun to be around Diamond at times, to learn new games from her and to hold her soft hand. How could Merry want to dampen his enthusiasm for sharing this wonderful feeling with every hobbit he met? Bert certainly deserved a lass in his life, and Pip was sure that the maid lass deserved a lad.

“’Tisn’t it grand?” he asked, laughing, as he jumped one of his gray marbles over another of the same color.


Estella crouched, mitts upon her hands, to withdraw the gingerbread from the oven. Elsewhere in the kitchen, Diamond puttered about, pouring fresh, hot mugs of tea. Trefoil had been sent down-cellar, to retrieve some food from the stores. Merry and Pippin were now taking a break from their games in order to smoke their pipes, and Estella’s mending was complete.

“Pippin seems improved today,” Estella said grudgingly as she set the pan of gingerbread on the counter and reached for a knife to slice it.

“Yes,” Diamond smiled. “I am glad.”

Another few moments followed of an awkward silence -- well, that’s what Estella thought it was, anyway -- before she felt compelled to say something else.

“Thank you again for helping me with my mending,” she said abruptly. “You really didn’t have to.”

Diamond frowned slightly now as she set the teapot down upon a trivet. “Was it not welcome?” she asked hesitantly.

Estella blew out a breath in frustration, resting the cutting edge of the knife against the side of the pan. “Did you mean what you said?” she asked, looking directly at Diamond, her hand still clutched about the knife handle. “About us being friends?” she added as Diamond looked a tad confused.

“Oh,” Diamond said, the confusion, and her face, clearing. “Why, yes, of course,” she added as she reached for the tea cozy. “Pippin considers you his dearest friends.”

“But--but,” Estella spluttered, dropping the knife now so that it clattered to the countertop. “Don’t you remember the last time you visited? What you said about me? At the Hall?” she continued as Diamond again looked confused.

“Oh!” Diamond said brightly, remembering that she had had to intervene when Estella made a remark that could have damaged Captain Peregrin. “But that’s all over, now, isn’t it?” she asked with some anxiousness.

“Merry told me he’d ask Pippin to speak to you,” Estella’s chin quivered as she picked up the knife again and began prying thick, moist hunks of gingerbread from the pan.

“He did,” Diamond said, gliding across the kitchen to place her hand above Estella’s that gripped the side of the pan. She bowed her head and whispered her next words in a tone of awe, a smile upon her lips. “Pippin said ‘thank you.’”

Estella twisted her face and slashed at the gingerbread, dumping it upon plates in crumbling heaps that did not meet her usual standards for attractive presentation.

She carried the tray with the plates of gingerbread to the great room, while Diamond followed with another tray containing the cups of tea. Trefoil, meanwhile, had returned from the cellar with a small jar of cream, and some raisins, which the hobbits placed upon their gingerbread as an addition to the snack.

“Are you enjoying the game, Merry?” Estella asked as she set his gingerbread in front of him.

“Well, it is interesting,” Merry said and took one last drag on his pipe before setting it aside in favor of the gingerbread. “But it could stand some improvements,” he added, as one of the marbles Pippin was setting up rolled precariously before remaining still upon the table.

“Nonsense,” Pippin said determinedly. “It’s great fun. You lasses ought to play a game!” He scooped up a handful of blue marbles, and another of red, and held them out to Diamond.

Handing Trefoil her now-empty tray, Diamond took the offered marbles back to the lasses’ table, where they settled in again. Trefoil took up her own knitting -- not so fine a yarn as the Mistress’s, but a hobbitess always had to have something going, she did -- as the two gentlehobbits’ wives attempted to play.

After a while, it became apparent that the dots Diamond had drawn on another piece of parchment were not a sufficient playing board for Estella, who was also easily distracted by the marbles’ tendency to roll. The concept that she could, at any time after the game started, jump her marble over any others in play -- her own or her opponent’s -- confused Estella, contrary as it was to the games she was used to.

Diamond won quickly and easily, and the hobbitesses’ interest in the game petered out in favor of observing their husbands. Merry, now conversant with the rules, had turned his mind to strategy, and both he and Pippin were concentrating harder than they had been before.

Diamond idly ate from the stack of raisins piled upon the table until she heard Estella give a soft sigh. Glancing over at her friend, Diamond looked quickly at the two hobbits, then picked up another raisin and raised her eyebrows to Estella as she held it.

It was Estella’s turn to look confused, but her look quickly turned to a smile as she clapped her hands over her mouth to prevent the sounds of a giggle escaping when Diamond let the dried grape fly so that it landed lodged in one of the curls of Pippin’s bent head.

Estella’s eyes were dancing with animation now, and she reached to take a tiny projectile herself and raised her arm to aim for another throw at Pippin.

Diamond gently grasped Estella’s forearm and shook her head no, which caused Mistress Brandybuck to deflate just slightly, but Diamond immediately followed that move with a slight nod in Merry’s direction, and Estella brightened considerably.

The two hobbitesses played at this game for some time, suppressing their giggles in favor of grins and feigning intent interest in a game of North Farthing draughts at the infrequent times their husbands looked up. Perhaps because of the different tightness of Merry’s curls, or perhaps because of the angle from which she was throwing, far fewer of Estella’s raisins ended up embedded in her husband’s hair than did Diamond’s. The snow which melted into drips as it touched the warm sides of the house muffled their plops.

At last, Merry pushed away from the game table, satisfied that he had figured how to win at this game, and Pippin raised his head, too, and stretched his arms above it.

“Pip!” Merry said in surprise as the leg of his chair met with, and squashed into the floor, a discarded raisin. “Look at the mess you’ve made of Estella’s clean floor!”

Both their wives seemed to laugh at just this time, and Merry and Pippin looked over to see them rising from their own table. Pippin retorted to his cousin’s comment with, “Me! ‘Tis all around your chair, I see.” He leaned over, hands clutching the edges of the table and one foot still balanced upon the footstool, to move his head and better survey the floor.

“I!” Merry answered indignantly. “I do not scatter and waste my food.”

“Of course you don’t, Merry,” Estella said soothingly s she came to stand beside him. “And there’s no need to worry about the raisins. They’ll be picked up easily and fast.”

“I suppose,” Merry relented, watching Pippin tilt a beaming face back to gaze up at Diamond as she stood behind him.

“Did you have fun, then?” he asked.

“Yes, husband,” Diamond answered, surreptitiously removing a raisin from his curls to pop into her mouth in a moment.

Estella, too, felt a pang as she observed the contented, smiling expressions on the faces of the two hobbits across from her.


“Well, they’re off,” Merry announced as he came through the door to Crickhollow’s kitchen, having scuffed the stable dirt off his feet in the anteroom. “We’ll have our cart returned when they send another traveler back with it, I suppose.”

“Yes,” Estella said quietly, carefully watching the motion of her dish towel as she wiped dry one of the plates from second breakfast.

“Suppose they might hire something out in Hobbiton or Bywater and send it back when they stay at Sam’s for the night, as they’ve planned,” Merry continued. He reached to pour himself another cup of hot, bracing tea.

Seeing the movement, however, Estella rapidly set down her dish and moved to pour the tea herself. She held out the full, steaming mug to Merry, who took it from her, bemused.

“It’ll be a nice rest for the ponies, too, that all three of them rode across the Shire,” he added after blowing on the tea and taking a cautious sip.

“Yes, I suppose it will,” answered Estella, who had now turned back to the dishes.

Merry continued to stare at her back while he sipped his tea, small furrows appearing in his forehead as his usual chatterbox of a wife remained silent and deliberate in her movements.

“Are you all right, Estella?” he asked finally, putting an arm around her as he placed the empty mug in the dishpan. “You’re not sick or anything, are you?”

Estella had jumped a little at the contact, and now tears pricked at her eyes as she shook her head quickly, not looking at Merry.

“No -- no, hu--Merry,” she recovered quickly. “I am fine.”

“Estella!” Merry was dumbfounded, and turned her to face him, his hands upon her shoulders holding her in place. “Did you just call me ‘husband’?”

“Yes,” she answered, her chin quivering.

“But--but why?” Merry asked in bewilderment.

Estella did collapse into tears then, leaning forward to rest her forehead on his chest while Merry wrapped his arms around her. “I just wanted to make you happy -- as Diamond does for Pippin,” she sobbed out.

Merry stilled his patting hand for a moment, the roll of his eyes he’d been about to accomplish turning into a contemplative look instead. As Diamond made Pippin happy?

He moved one foot back a half-step and placed his hands again on Estella’s shoulders, looking her in the eye as she raised her face.

“Estella,” he said firmly. “I have no need for you to act like Diamond for me to love you. In fact,” he added with a quirk of his mouth, “I find it quite worrisome when you’re deferential.”

“Oh! You!” Estella said with mild indignation and slapped lightly at him.

Merry laughed and caught her hand in his, and they both leaned together for a kiss.

Breaking their lips apart but remaining in each other’s arms, Merry’s cheek resting upon the top of Estella’s head, he grew thoughtful again.

“You know, love, I just now thought of something I once heard my mother say.”

“What’s that?” Estella asked from her warm and snuggly position within Merry’s embrace.

He answered slowly, his eyes fixed far away. “That every marriage is a mystery, except to the two who are in it.”