Chapter the Fourth: In which Bilbo discovers that Young Hobbits are to be Heard as well as Seen, has a Serious Discussion, and finds a Solution to a Problem.

A wailing sound wakened Bilbo from a sound sleep, and for a moment he lay blinking, wondering if perhaps Gollum had sneaked into the smial in the night in search of his Precious. A hand under the pillow reassured him on that subject. He dressed hastily, splashed water on his face, and went in search of the disturbance.

In the hallway he found the reason for the distressing sound. Pearl stood in the doorway of the little ones' guest room, holding tight to the littlest Took, while Eglantine peeped from the best guest room, trying to reason with the tot.

 ‘Stay away, Vinca,’ she said in obvious distress. ‘Da’s ill, and Mum mustn’t come near you, for I don’t want you to catch it!’

 ‘Come now, Vinca!’ Bilbo said in his cheeriest manner. He lifted the sobbing tot from her sister’s imprisoning arms and swooped her into the air. ‘Someone’s got to cook the breakfast, and I’m sure I don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t have some help. Have you any idea about what’s the best thing to have? Steak and kidney pie?’

The little one reared back in astonishment, blinking at Bilbo. ‘Eggses,’ she said firmly.

 ‘Eggses!’ Bilbo said in astonishment. ‘The very idea! Why, I never heard of such. Eggses! You’ll have to point them out to me, and tell me what to do with them, my dear, for Mrs. Goodbody won’t be in today—I’ve given her the week off, you know, and I thought I’d have to go back on my word and call her in to keep from starving to death, but now you’ve come I have every confidence...’

Eglantine smiled through her tears as the old hobbit disappeared into the kitchen, still chattering away.

 ‘I like Uncle Bilbo; he’s nice,’ Pimpernel observed. ‘I don’t think he’s a cracked pot at all!’

 ‘Nell!’ Pearl scolded, but her mother wiped at her face and put on a bright smile.

 ‘I quite agree with you, Nell,’ she said. ‘Now you two go and see about breakfast.’

 ‘How’s Da?’ Pearl said, her wide eyes anxious. ‘Can’t we see him?’

 ‘He’s sleeping,’ Eglantine temporised. ‘He was asking after you earlier, and I told him I’d give him your love.’ In point of fact, Paladin had muttered his daughters’ names in his delirium, but she wasn’t going to worry them with that news.

Bilbo had somehow managed to locate and identify eggs, crack them into a bowl, and melt butter in the frypan preparatory to scrambling them, all following Vinca’s lisping directions. He set Pearl to toasting bread over the fire and had Pimpernel set their places at the kitchen table, all the while feeling like something the cat had dragged in.

Healer Grubb had arrived in the middle night, happily wearied (“a fine little lad, the image of his father!”), but her tired smile had changed to alarm when she examined Paladin. ‘He’s hotter than he was,’ she said, ‘and much hotter than is good for him! I’m all for letting a fever run its course, but this one’s like to bake his brains...’

Looking from Bilbo to Eglantine, she said, ‘Bring in a tub and fill it with cool water. We’ll see if we can bring his temperature down.’

 ‘Why not snow?’ Bilbo said.

The healer glared. ‘We want to cool him, not kill him,’ she snapped.

Bilbo nodded thoughtfully. The way Paladin had been heating up the cloths laid on his forehead, he wondered if a cool bath would do much good. He hadn’t had a day of sickness, himself, since returning from his Journey, and so he was rather dim about such details. However, he dutifully hauled the copper tub into the bedroom and the buckets of water to fill it, even one that he had put on the stove when the healer had arrived, to heat in case the healer needed it for whatever healers used steaming water, when Healer Grubb deemed that the cold water was too cold.

Eglantine undressed her husband, and Bilbo lifted him from the bed, staggering a little under his weight, and eased him into the tub. While Eglantine and the healer held the limp Paladin’s head out of the water, Bilbo changed the sweat-soaked sheets.

 ‘That’s better,’ Healer Grubb said after some time. ‘He’s cooler. Let’s get him out.’

Bilbo obediently lifted Paladin out, managed to get him to the bed without dropping him, and laid him down upon the towelling he’d put down on healer’s orders. Eglantine and Aspidistra Grubb dried Paladin, robed him in a clean nightshirt from the luggage, and tucked him up once more. He roused slightly with a questioning sound.

 ‘All’s well, love,’ Eglantine said softly, stroking a damp curl back from the forehead.

 ‘Broth!’ the healer hissed, and Bilbo jumped to obey. He had some broth already keeping warm on the stove, and Paladin was awake enough to take nearly the whole mug. He took some plain water as well, a good sign, the healer said. ‘Keep ‘im drinking,’ she said. ‘It’ll keep his innards from shrivelling to nothing.’ She arose, stretched, and said, ‘Well, I’ll be back later in the day.’ To Eglantine she added, ‘Try to get some rest yourself, dearie. You won’t do him any good should you fall ill.’

Bilbo walked her to the door, and fell into his bed about an hour before the dawn.

Now it was about an hour after the dawn, but he forced himself to eat heartily and pressed extra helpings on the little lasses, while recounting the feast at Lake Town after he and the Dwarves had escaped the Wood Elves.

 ‘It was my birthday, you know,’ he said, ‘and I had to give a speech, and I had the most shocking cold in the head you can imagine! About all I could say was, “Thag you very buch!” It looked to be a wonderful feast...’

 ‘Looked?’ asked Pimpernel.

 ‘I couldn’t taste a thing,’ Bilbo confessed. ‘I’ve often wanted to go back, just to find out what it was I missed. D’you suppose they’d throw another feast for my benefit?’ He was enveloped in a rising cloud of giggles.

 ‘There’s a grand sound,’ Eglantine said from the doorway.

 ‘Mother!’ the three little ones chorused, or rather, “Mother!” and “Mama” and “Ma!” all together in a jumble of excitement.

Bilbo held them back, even as Eglantine held out a restraining hand. ‘He’s better,’ she said with a tired smile. ‘The fever’s broken, and he’s asking for something to eat. Still, my darlings, stay away for a little bit longer, just until we’re sure the fever’s past catching.’

A babble of bright voices answered her, and Bilbo set them back down at the table with bread and butter and honey while he stirred up some more eggs for Paladin and Eglantine.

 ‘You do have honey!’ Pimpernel observed, pushing back a wayward curl with a sticky hand.

 ‘I do indeed; were you in doubt?’ Bilbo asked in surprise.

 ‘You have real sugar for your tea, just like they do at the Great Smials, and at Brandy Hall,’ Pimpernel said. ‘We have honey for our tea, from our own hives, and Da says that paying for sugar is a waste of good coin.’

 ‘Ah,’ Bilbo said, making a long face, as Pearl looked daggers at her sister. ‘But I have no beehives, and so I must buy my honey. And honey comes dear, you know. So I must settle for sugar in my tea.’

 ‘You must buy your honey!’ Pimpernel said in shock.

 ‘That’s the sad truth of the matter,’ Bilbo said, shaking his head.

 ‘Why, we’ve more than we need!’ Pimpernel said. ‘Don’t we, Pearl?’

 ‘We do, indeed,’ Pearl said.

 ‘Let’s give him some of ours!’ Pimpernel said.

 ‘Let’s, do!’ little Vinca piped.

Unexpectedly, Pearl was in full agreement with Pimpernel, for perhaps the first time since they’d arrived. ‘Yes,’ she said, with an emphatic nod. ‘Just as much as he wants.’

Pimpernel gave a nod of her own and turned back to Bilbo with an earnest look. ‘No one should have to take sugar in his tea for want of honey,’ she said.

 ‘Indeed,’ Bilbo said, and that seemed to be the end of the matter.

Paladin slept much of the day, a proper sleep, and Eglantine stretched out beside him on the bed to doze. Bilbo was left in charge of the little ones, and he rose to the occasion.

They took a brisk walk in the winter sunshine, made a row of snow hobbits, had a snowball fight with the young Gamgees from Number Three, and came back to eat heartily of the stew Bilbo had set to simmering before they left the smial.

After lunch it was time for the young hobbits to go down for a nap. Pearl said she’d watch over the littler ones, but when Bilbo peeked into their room not long after she’d finished singing a nursery-tune to her little sisters, he saw them all curled together on the bed, fast asleep. He smiled and sought his own bed, and gave himself up to a restorative nap.

In the afternoon he sat down with them on the study floor with pencils and sheets of foolscap and showed them how to draw simple pictures: flowers, birds, mountains, ponies, snow-hobbits and the like. Their eyes were wide at the expanse of paper... they were used to doing their lessons on smoothed-out brown paper that had come home wrapped around parcels bought at market or in one of the little shops in Whitwell, or drawing pictures with the burned end of a stick on the hearthstones.

They took tea all together, around the bed where Paladin sat propped up, and a merry occasion it was indeed. Of course, afterwards, Paladin was ready to sleep again, and after a time of story-telling, followed by a light supper, it was time to tuck the little ones into their bed once more. This time Eglantine was happy to do the honours, while Bilbo sat with his recovering cousin.

 ‘I cannot thank you enough for taking us in,’ Paladin said. ‘I don’t know what we would have done if...’

 ‘I cautioned your wife about borrowing trouble, earlier,’ Bilbo said. ‘I might say the same to you.’

 ‘How can I ever repay you?’ the farmer persisted.

 ‘We can talk about that later,’ Bilbo said. ‘Now tell me what you were doing, driving to Buckland while seriously ill?’

 ‘I didn’t think it was all that serious,’ Paladin said. ‘I cannot remember the last time I was ill. O aye, I had a headache, like as if one of the ponies had kicked me unawares, but... that was no reason... We always spend Yule at Brandy Hall, always. I promised my sister Ally we would, back when she was due to marry and be taken away to the Wilds of Buckland, away from her home and all her kin and all she loved, save that Brandybuck who’d stolen her heart away. She was in tears, I’ll tell you, the day before the wedding. “I cannot, Dinny, I cannot,” she sobbed. “Then don’t,” I says, for I’m a practical hobbit if naught else. “But I cannot live, not if it’s without him,” she says, and what am I to say to that? Either way, I’m to lose my sister!’

 ‘So what did you do?’ Bilbo asked.

 ‘I promised her, I’d visit faithfully every Yuletide and spend a month in the bargain,’ Paladin said. ‘There’s naught to be done on the farm, that time of year. Harvest’s in, and planting’s yet to start, and if I work at it I can have all the harness repaired and the plough oiled and ready to go on my return.’

 ‘And so you bring a little bit of Tookland with you when you come,’ Bilbo said. He thought of the musical lilt of the Tooks he’d heard in Esmeralda Brandybuck’s voice, and how it grew broader and deeper in the company of her brother, during those Yuletides he’d spent at Brandy Hall. It was true, every time he visited Buckland at Yuletide, Paladin was there with his family. He’d kept his promise.

 ‘Aye, a little bit o’ Tookland,’ Paladin said. ‘I’ve never missed a year since her wedding, not one.’ His eyes grew sorrowful as he thought of his promise, to be broken for the first time.

 ‘You might not have to miss this year,’ Bilbo said, patting his hand.

 ‘Ah, well,’ Paladin said, straightening, and deliberately changed the subject. ‘So, Eglantine told me you had visitors when we arrived.’

Bilbo laughed. ‘The Sackville-Bagginses,’ he affirmed. ‘So you see, you’ve already done me a great service, frightening them away with your threat of fever!’

 Paladin chuckled. ‘The Talk is,’ he said, ‘that Lobelia thinks to be claiming Bag End one of these years, rather sooner than later if she has her way. I’ve even heard Talk that she intends to move in to succour you in your declining years. Did she bring a measuring stick with her, to work out where to put all her furniture?’

 ‘She doesn’t know that I’m planning to rival the Old Took,’ Bilbo said in a conspiratorial tone. ‘Don’t let’s tell her; we’ll let it be a surprise.’

Paladin grinned, but the grin faded. ‘Well I know what it is, not to have an heir,’ he said. ‘We’ve tried for years, my love and I, and all but given it up.’

 ‘All but?’ Bilbo said.

Paladin shook his head. ‘The last one gave her such trouble,’ he said, ‘the healer warned us off having any more. I don’t know who’ll inherit the farm... perhaps I ought to just let Lalia have it. I’ve managed to scrape together enough each year to pay on our debt, but it’s a hard row to hoe. Fortinbras was always fair, but Lalia...’

 ‘Have you talked to Ferumbras?’ Bilbo asked delicately.

Paladin snorted. ‘That one don’t wipe his...’ he changed, mid-phrase, but Bilbo hid a grin, knowing what he’d avoided saying, ‘...his nose without her permission.’

 ‘I didn’t say I don’t have an heir,’ Bilbo said, for an idea had been growing in his mind at the thought of Buckland. Frodo Baggins. He’s already a Baggins, as it were. How much trouble would it be...?

‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘not to change the subject, but I was thinking of going to Brandy Hall myself for Yule this year. Why, Yuletide has barely begun. If we wrapped you up well and laid you in the back of the waggon with a lantern under the blankets to keep you warm, we could leave first thing! I could drive straight through, and we could be to Brandy Hall before they light the Yule Log...’

The End... or is it the Beginning?