Mum had made it for him after his feet stopped growing, figuring that height could not be far behind.  Oh, she could have hired a tailor easily, but she was, above all, his mother, and she’d insisted that she make his first nice waistcoat as a grown hobbit.

She’d made it to last, too, and small wonder, the fabric was so fine.  It was a bright, coppery, silky thing, and he didn’t know how many other families could even afford it if it was imported from the South the way the traders had said.  Merry had informed him had blinded him on at least one occasion (Pippin didn’t believe him).  The buttons shone like newly-minted pennies, and while Mum had informed him that this might make it harder to match, Pippin hadn’t really cared.

There weren’t a lot of occasions to wear it—weddings and Yule, mostly—but that made it more special.  Unlike several hobbits of his acquaintance, Pippin understood that part of the importance of dressing up was having a proper occasion for it.  He’d had too much of sisters to believe that fine clothing was anything but an excuse for ladies—and Gondor, he later emended—to exert more control over their husbands, sons, and little brothers.  Still, sometimes (and he was very careful never to admit this to Merry) you could have something that made all of the starch worth it.  He’d had an unusually high number of feminine whispers follow him whenever he wore the waistcoat at parties.

They’d kept it, of course, partly in hope for his return, and partly because no one else could take it.  Pippin ran his hand over the fabric, rubbed a thumb over each button, then felt for the straps in the back that were supposed to let it out as he put on more weight with age.

He sighed.  He’d wanted it to last, and up till now he’d secretly hoped that all the growth had been in his legs.

Wasn’t meant to be, though—there was a full inch of white shirt going the waistcoat didn’t cover anymore.

Was he too large for it, or was it too small for him?