Chapter 20. From the Journal of Fortinbras Took, S.R. 1158

The snow is gone, all of it, as if it were just a dream.

I hopped out of bed very early, managed to sneak out of our apartments, evading Fanny, and a good thing, too, for she’d have it that a young hobbit must have breakfast before he stirs foot out the door. There were apples on the table in the sitting room, and with one for each pocket and one in each hand I was well supplied. It might not be hot breakfast, but it’s quick and easy to take away.

It was really very early; no one was about in the corridors. How I looked forward to the first magical glimpse into the torchlit courtyard... only to encounter dull, pounding rain. No soft, sparkling, snowy blanket, as had been there at last glimpse, yester eve, before Fanny caught me at the doorway and took hold of my ear, to drag me off to my bath and bed, as if I were years younger! She takes her duty much too seriously, in my considered opinion.

There was muttering in the great room at breakfast, and long faces every where I looked. One of them was mine, of course, and all the others of us who’d planned a glorious snow-castle, a fitting abode for the snow-hobbits we’d made yesterday. Of course the mufflers and mitts and knitted hats and carrot noses are lying in puddles, now, and Fanny was quite put out when she was sent out to gather these up and hang them up from the launderers’ lines, to steam before the blazing fires there, that warm the great cauldrons for wash and bath water and dry the wet things nearly so quick as the summer sun.

Uncle says it doesn’t matter about the second cutting of the hay fields, as the first cutting is safely in and stacked to shed the rain, and was so prodidg prodig much larger than usual. He says we have enough hay to last us until Yule after next, even with the animals eating themselves fat in their stalls, should the winter prove a snowy one. Grandfa pulled his lip, but seemed somewhat comforted when Da agreed with Uncle.

The tweens were sent out in the rain to gather apples. We younger ones were not sent out, for fear we’d “catch our deaths”, but that did not spare us an onerous task. As the baskets of sopping apples were brought in, it was our lot to pick the fruit out, one round, red, sweet-smelling globe at a time, wipe them carefully dry, and lay them on paper. There they’ll dry an extra day before being packed away in barrels.

And does it not matter if the tweens should “catch their deaths”, I ask you?