Chapter 2.  A Matter of Importance

Estella kept looking down the road as they loaded the coach. She half expected to see Merry ride up, grinning triumphantly. I’m never late!

But no Merry appeared, not even as the coach passed the North Gate and turned towards the Brandywine Bridge.

Miri happily gazed from one window while young Perry looked out of the other, both craning for a sight of their father. They watched in vain all that day. ‘Isn’t Father coming to the wedding?’ Perry asked as they pulled into the yard of the inn halfway to Bywater, ready for supper and bed after a day in the coach.

 ‘Of course he is!’ Estella said stoutly. She only hoped she was telling the truth.

***

At that moment Merry was riding wearily along the Great North Road, his head drooping and swaying with the motion of the pony, the clip-clop of the hoofs a hypnotic rhythm drawing him deeper into dream. A pleasant dream it was, too: he was arriving at the North Gate just as the coach with his family was passing out of Buckland. ‘You see,’ he laughed, tipping his hat to Estella. ‘My timing is impeccable, as always.’

 ‘As always,’ Estella said, her ire changing to laughter in a twinkling. ‘I thought the King of Rohan had managed to delay your departure so long you’d miss young Frodo’s wedding. I should have known better.’

 ‘You should have!’ Merry said, gratefully sliding down from the pony’s back. Ah, but it would be nice to relax in the coach. Perhaps he’d even be able to sleep a bit, and then of course there’d be the stopover halfway to Bywater. He’d sleep in a bed this night!

 ‘Don’t you think a bed would suit better than a saddle?’

 ‘Indeed,’ Merry answered, but something was wrong... He lifted his head as the dream dissolved, finding himself once more on the Road, too far from the Shire.

 ‘I say, Little Master, I hardly thought to find a Halfling half-asleep on a pony this day!’ the voice came again, and Merry looked up to see a peddler grinning at him from the seat of a cart.

 ‘Indeed,’ Merry repeated, stretching. ‘It’s a long way to the Shire.’

 ‘It is!’ the peddler said. He cocked his eye at the lowering Sun. ‘Be dark soon,’ he observed. ‘Would you like to share my fire and food? All I ask in return is a story... it can be lonely, travelling all the day.’

 ‘My thanks,’ Merry said with a grateful nod. He’d be all the fresher for the rest. Though he begrudged the delay, he recognised that he’d go on faster and his pony would as well, if they took a breather.

***

 ‘It looks as if we have enough to feed the entire Shire,’ Sam said, entering the kitchen where baskets of food were piled high.

 ‘Half the Shire, perhaps,’ Rose said, casting a critical eye over the bounty. ‘Enough to hold up our end. The Burrowses are responsible for the wedding breakfast, and I’m that glad of it!’

 ‘You can be sure that half of Bywater will be cooking and baking to meet the need,’ Sam said with a kiss for the flushed cheek. ‘Day after tomorrow; I can hardly believe it.’

 ‘Our little Frodo-lad, all grown up and soon to be married!’ Rose said, wiping away a treacherous tear. ‘Ah, Sam, I feel so old!’

 Sam smiled. ‘You’re as young as the day you came to our door with a basket of good things your mum had sent, because my Mum was feeling poorly,’ he said. ‘I’ve never forgot how your eyes sparkled, or the way your curls pulled loose from the braids, and how you tossed your head when the wind teased them.’

 ‘Mmmm,’ she said, leaning into him. Looking up with a twinkle in her eye, she murmured, ‘Samwise Gamgee, will you marry me?’

 ‘I thought you’d never ask!’ he murmured in reply. They shared a long kiss before the moment was shattered by Pippin-lad bouncing in the door.

 ‘I’m starving!’ he announced, though he had eaten enough at Cottons’ to make his Aunt Marigold roll her eyes and mutter about tweens’ appetites. ‘What’s for supper?’

 ‘Naught, until you take these baskets to the cool room,’ his mother informed him. ‘And no poaching! I’ve counted everything and if there’s anything missing, I’ll know!’

 ‘Yes’m,’ Pip smiled and took up two large baskets. The cool room was the deepest cellar, delved far under the Hill and always cold, even on the hottest day of summer. It was a good place for keeping food made ahead, why, milk stayed sweet there for up to a week!

Soon all the Gamgees were gathered at the supper table, laughing and talking.

 ‘Did you see your Daisy today?’ Mother Rose asked with a smile.

 ‘Course he did!’ Merry-lad shouted. ‘He can’t see her at all on the morrow, so he had to look into her eyes twice as long today to make up for it!’

 ‘Merry,’ Sam said mildly and the tween subsided.

 ‘Bad luck to see the bride the day before the wedding,’ Pip put in with a grin. ‘Will you miss her, Fro?’

 ‘Of course,’ Frodo said, placidly helping himself to more fried taters. ‘But we’ll make up for it after.’

 ‘Your rooms are all ready,’ Sam said. They’d built on to Bag End, digging two more rooms on the far side of the smial. There was a lovely sitting room with large windows to welcome the Sun and a bedroom across the corridor, snug under the Hill where it would make for cool sleeping on hot summer nights. When little Gardners began to arrive more bedrooms could be dug; there was plenty of room to expand Bag End on the side lacking neighbours. Frodo and his Daisy could be private in their sitting room or they could (and likely would, most days) take their meals with the family in the kitchen. Some day when the last of Sam and Rose’s brood left the nest, they’d take the little smial-added-on to the big smial, and Frodo’s family would occupy Bag End and look after them.

 ‘But you mayn’t look at them yet!’ Goldi said quickly. She was hurrying to finish sewing together the braided rug for the bedroom... Frodo’s brothers had excavated and braced and hammered and sawed and whitewashed, his parents had sought out furniture, his sisters had provided all the soft furnishings. Primrose had one more pillow to stuff and sew closed, and sister Daisy—imagine, two Daisies under one roof!—had finished the curtains only that day.

 ‘Of course not!’ Frodo said. ‘And spoil the surprise?’

 ‘That’s not the surprise,’ Merry-lad said, sharing a mischievous look with Pip. The two tweens had not come up with something sufficiently grand as yet, but there was one more day to work at it before the wedding day arrived.

***

Merigrin Took peered into the nesting box he’d fixed in the apple tree. His heart leaped with joy. Yes! A pair of blue tits had taken residence. They’d built the nest of intertwined moss, grass, leaves, and roots and lined it softly with hair and feathers. Merry recognised some of the hair: he’d offered to clean his sisters’ hairbrushes and hung the gleanings on twigs in the orchard.

The parents were nowhere to be seen, and there were no eggs in the nest or the mother would have been sitting on them. Merry had heard that blue tits were close sitters. He hoped they hadn’t built this cosy home only to abandon it. He slid out of the tree and climbed another, some distance away. He’d come back early on the morrow to see if the little birds had returned.

The day after tomorrow was the wedding, of course, but if no eggs appeared on the morrow, he'd creep out very early on the wedding day and be back before his family left for the wedding breakfast. No one would notice. He did not want to miss the laying of the eggs! It was a matter of some importance, as he’d been watching this particular box for three years now, hoping a family would take up residence. He couldn’t wait to see if these blue tits would lay the prodigious quantity of eggs he’d heard about from Ferdibrand Took.

***

Estella tucked her children into bed with a story, though she was only half-attending to what she said and as a result the hero-hobbit's pony changed from brown to dapple-grey halfway through.

 'It was a magical pony!' Miri said, her eyes wide with wonder. Grateful for the idea, Estella continued, managing to finish satisfactorily though her thoughts were on Merry. Where was he this night? They had one more day's journey to Bywater. How much did he have?