A young, new nurse had once asked Briony if she did not wish she had children of her own. Briony had looked at the lass with something close to scorn and said, “Each one of them is my own.”
 
She has raised three generations of Tooks, from Paladin and Esmie, to Paladin’s four children, and now her little Faramir. She has had a hand in the upbringing of countless other children, from Pearl’s lot to Esmie’s lad to dozens of other children at the Smials.
 
Now that she is old and somewhat more placid, she thinks that perhaps she could have been kinder in her youth, but then again, she has never heard a complaint from a child over her part in his or her life. Perhaps children understood and loved her fierceness; perhaps they needed someone in their lives who would speak bluntly and truly to them.
 
She is not so fierce now, and she lavishes Faramir with all of the kindnesses stored up within her. Briony thinks this is for the best, for this child who may as well be without a mother most of the time. She knows she is his nurse chiefly in name, and that the lass overseeing Pervinca’s children (dreadful little things that they are) has charge of Faramir as well. But it is Briony who puts Faramir to bed at night, and dresses him for festivities. It is Briony he comes to when his body or his heart have been bumped and scraped and bruised. It is Briony who rocks him when he cries for his mother, and it is Briony he presents with toads and marbles and birds’ eggs and the other treasures of his young life.
 
Wish she had children of her own, indeed. She is loved (and feared) by more children than she can account for, and now, in the last years of her life, some greater power has given her this last little lad, who looks so like his father and has a heart as big as the Shire itself. No, Briony is much too sensible a hobbit to waste time over could-have-beens. Besides, what could have been better than this?

(Note: Briony is my original character, the childhood nurse of the Took children. She appears in a number of my stories.)