Chapter Three: "Bed In Summer"

Pippin paused a few feet behind the chairs set out upon the lawn of the Smials where some of the elderly relatives were dozing, or talking. Among them were both Lalia the Fat and his own grandmother.

He glanced off in the direction of the music and dancing. Still silly lasses’ dances. Nothing he wanted to do, he thought as he took a bite from one of the biscuits he held. Da was dancing with Mama, likely just to be nice to her, Pippin decided. Older hobbits did that, sometimes: they did silly things, like dance what lasses wanted, just to be nice.

Pippin’s eyes roved the party as he continued chewing on the biscuit. There – in a far notch of the field – that’s where the lads and lasses who’d been playing with the crackers had gone. It looked now that they were getting up some sort of game. That should be fun!

Pippin grinned and took a step in that directon, now bearing a slightly smaller handful of biscuits.

Then he faltered, catching sight of another hobbit grouping. Merry and Frodo were over there, off under a tree, and they looked to be talking quite seriously – when they weren’t having a tussle over their plates.

Pippin frowned and looked down at the biscuits he held, then at the backs of elderly hobbit heads.

Merry was being nice to Frodo, just like Da did for Mama, ‘cause he was an older and more responsible hobbit. ‘Twas why he couldn’t share Pippin’s room as usual on this visit, too, he’d said: he had to look out for Frodo.

Pippin licked some biscuit crumbs off his lips and shyly sought out the back of his grandmother’s head. He took a tentative step toward her.

Grandda Banks had died in the last year, so ‘twas likely she was still sad. Pippin didn’t remember much of Grandda Banks – just the terribly loud sneezes that punctuated his only very occasional visits to their farm, or his grandparents’ to the Smials. His sisters had each, in turn, gone to stay with the Bankses for a time upon occasion, but, when he asked, Pippin had always been told that he was too young yet to do the same.

“Twasn’t the true reason, probably, Pippin thought reflectively as his small feet soaked in the cool, green grass as he softly walked toward his grandmother. After all, he’d gone to Bag End, now, with just Merry and himself, hadn’t he?

He stopped behind Grandmama and took a deep breath before stepping round to the front of her chair. Nodding, Violet Banks started up again as she felt small eyes upon her. She was about to ask about his presence when Pippin abruptly thrust a biscuit toward her. A bit shyly, he asked, “’Twould you like a biscuit, Grandmama?”

Oh. Violet blinked at the film that persisted in clouding her eyes and looked closer at her unexpected benefactor. Eg’s little lad. The one she barely knew, as preoccupied with her husband’s health as she’d been, and Eg just as much worried about that of her son. Now, though, ‘twas nothing standing between them, and Violet smiled a wrinkled smile and reached out an age-spotted hand to take the biscuit.

“Yes. Thank you, lad,” she said in a creaky voice and then, having got the biscuit nearly to her lips, she patted her lap with the other hand. “Would you like to sit here with me and eat your own biscuit, Pippin?” she asked tremulously and near held her breath. Like as not, the lad would be afraid of her, shy around strangers as they were when they were young.

Pippin did hesitate slightly, but then he nodded and climbed up onto Violet’s lap. They sat quietly munching their biscuits as other hobbits’ talk droned around them and the music tinkled from the field.

‘Twas nice here, Pippin thought with a bit of surprise, and relaxed a wee bit more into his grandmother’s soft lap. Why, ‘twasn’t that hard a’tall to be nice like the grownups.

Violet felt him relax and smiled to herself. When she had finished her biscuit, and Pippin was nearly halfway through his second, his head now pillowed against her chest, she began softly humming in the back of her throat.

He blinked a couple of times, and then his eyes slipped closed as he slowed in eating his biscuit until only a small crumb was left clutched in his hand. Violet smiled and carefully extracted the remaining two biscuits he still held in his other hand, passing them out to the hobbitesses on either side of her, as she began to sing:

“In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candlelight.
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.
I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people’s feet
Still going past me in the street.
And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?”

* “Bed in Summer,” by Robert Louis Stevenson, from A Child’s Garden of Verses