Chapter 3. Momentous News

Tea in the Thain’s sitting room with eleven Gamgee children, along with the Thain’s family and the Steward and his wife and children, was something of an organised bedlam. Of course the older were used to helping the younger, and Diamond delighted to hold little Robin on her lap, and was his delighted slave as he pointed to the various items of food on their shared plate. Pippin and Diamond’s twins sat in high chairs between Pippin and Farry, since Diamond was fully occupied, and little Ruby Gamgee sat on a high chair between Frodo and Rosie-lass Gamgee. Regi the Steward and Rosa, his healer-wife, had their littlest one in between them, and a small child to each side, and though they were rather crowded, with so many around the table, they were used to managing their own little ones, not relying (like so many in the Great Smials) on nurses or minders, except in extraordinary circumstances when both were called away at the same time. The rest of the Gamgee children were old enough to manage themselves without much worse than an upset teacup or dropped biscuit.

Still, it was a noisy, happy crowd – and, it seemed, a hungry one as well, for platter after platter was emptied and replaced by the efficient servers, without even the necessity of a word from the Thain or nod from Mistress Diamond. There was much food going in, and much talk and laughter coming out, and quite a festive occasion – for it was something of a farewell party, with the removal to the Cottons’ looming over them.

Merry-lad and Pippin-lad were deep in plans with Farry for the latter to make a visit to the farm during their stay there. This was such a pleasant occupation that Farry had quite forgotten the message from Gondor – and even if he had remembered, he knew better than to hint at such a thing. It was not his news to tell, but his father’s, after all!

Goldi and Hamfast were in a contest to see who could eat the most dried-cherry tarts, and Frodo-lad and Rosie-lass were quite occupied with little Ruby, who was cutting a new tooth and thus off her feed, needing a fair amount of coaxing and tempting. Daisy and Primrose were busy dividing each scone they took from the platter into tiny pieces and carefully buttering each one, and young Bilbo was quite taken with Regi and Rosa’s six-year-old Rue, sitting beside him.

‘Good thing Ferdi’s not here this afternoon,’ Pippin said behind his hand to Diamond, with a wink. ‘He’d be making a match for certain!’

‘They’re much too young!’ Diamond protested under her breath.

Pippin twinkled. ‘That's never stopped him before,’ he said with a meaningful look from Faramir to Goldilocks, and then to his wife.

Diamond kicked him under the table. ‘Stop that!’ she said.

Pippin merely smiled and sipped his tea.

At last, when he determined that everyone was starting to slow down – the latest platters of tea sandwiches and teacakes and sweet biscuits had remained at half-full for some moments, rather than rapidly diminishing as they had been up to this point – the Thain cleared his throat. As Farry and Pip-lad and Merry-lad were laughing uproariously over some planned prank, the sound went rather lost in the hubbub. Pippin cleared his throat again, rather louder, and as there was a short burst of silence in the same moment, Rosa looked up sharply, her healer’s instincts roused.

She relaxed again, as the Thain said, ‘Ah, then. Now that I have your attention…’

‘A speech! A speech!’ cried several of the young Gamgees, tapping on their teacups with their spoons – for they’d seen this sort of thing, every time they accompanied their father to a festival or gathering where he was asked to open the festivities.

Pippin beamed on them all, and cleared his throat again, though it was much softer this time, something of a thought-gathering gesture, more than anything. ‘Well, then,’ he said. ‘I’m not so fine at speechmaking as some hobbits you may know – the Mayor comes to mind…’

The young Gamgees cheered for their father.

Pippin seemed to suddenly remember something, and dug inside his waistcoat, where he had an inside pocket for necessary things like hastily scribbled reminders of things needing to be done, or the names of hobbits he was about to meet with on official business. ‘O yes,’ he said, pulling forth a folded paper and shaking it out. ‘I have news from the Southlands…’

There was another cheer from the Gamgee children, and the rest of the children joined in just for the delight of it.

Pippin looked around the table. ‘It’s both good news, and perhaps news that might not be quite as welcome, but is really good for all that,’ he said.

There was a sudden silence as everyone, grown-ups and children alike, tried to work out the meaning of this statement. Regi had an impulse to say, None of your nonsense, now, but of course he tried not to say such things to the Thain in public, especially around young ones who might innocently repeat the sentiment at an awkward time. Somehow he managed to remain silent, but raised an eyebrow in a questioning manner and tilted his head, the better to listen.

‘Which do you want to hear first?’ Pippin asked into the general silence.

‘We want to hear all the news, of course!’ Rosie-lass said. ‘That is, if it’s about our parents, and Ellie…’

‘It is, isn’t it?’ Frodo-lad put in, quite sensibly, but then he was a sensible lad, even for a tween. ‘Otherwise you wouldn’t be telling it to us, I should think.’

‘Well then, I hardly know where to start,’ Pippin said, looking down at the letter and then sweeping the hobbits around the table with his glance. They were all ears.

‘Well then,’ he said again. ‘I suppose I will start with the presents.’

‘Presents!’ little Daisy squealed, clapping her hands in glee.

‘Where are they?’ Hamfast wanted to know. He looked under the cloth covering the table, but there was nothing there except for hobbit laps and limbs.

‘They are on their way,’ Pippin answered with a grin for the little ones’ excitement. ‘This letter was sent by courier, you see, and while a courier can carry an envelope at a very fast clip indeed, over a long distance, well, now, he wouldn’t be able to manage a heap of presents quite so handily, so those are being sent separately.’

Farry mimed a rider trying to hold the reins while juggling a toppling pile of packages, and Pip-lad, Merry-lad, and even Goldi chortled at the picture he made.

His father smiled fondly. ‘Be that as it may,’ he said. ‘Your parents are sending presents, because…’ here he hesitated, for he knew that the rest of the news would not be so welcome. Taking a deep breath, he bravely plunged on. ‘…because they’ll be staying in the Southlands a little longer than they’d originally planned.’

As he’d anticipated, the hilarity vanished and the young Gamgees sat staring solemnly. ‘Longer?’ Frodo-lad eventually managed. ‘How much longer?’

‘You see,’ Pippin said, feeling his way, ‘You’re to have another brother, or perhaps a sister, and they mayn’t travel until the little one is big enough to travel safely…’

‘Another baby!’ Primrose said in happy astonishment, and began to clap her hands, but then she stopped and her face fell. ‘But…’ she said in sudden understanding. ‘But babies take ever so long to be born…’

‘There was no baby when they left us,’ Daisy said, sounding bewildered. ‘Mama would have told us!’

‘And babies take ever so long,’ Primrose said again, this time in a tragic tone. ‘Most a year, isn’t it?’

Daisy burst into tears, and Bilbo set up a howl, and Goldi lost all colour and simply sat as if she’d been turned to stone.

It took quite some time to calm the teary tumult, but at last Pippin had them on an even keel once more (so to speak), and was talking cheerfully about plans for the next months – for of course they’d have two months at Cottons’ now, and then two months in Buckland, and then be able to return to the Great Smials for another whole two months, and so forth, until they received word that their parents were on their way home, and then they’d go to the Buckland to await their arrival.

‘Such a lovely welcoming celebration as we’ll have!’ Diamond said in her most cheerful tone. ‘Why, it’s a good thing we’ve a few months for the planning… What shall we do? Shall we have a feast, do you think? An enormous picnic by the banks of the Brandywine? Or atop the Hill in Hobbiton, so that all your neighbours may come?’

Most of the Gamgee children began to offer their suggestions to add to the plan, and soon many voices were all speaking at once, tumbling over each other with ideas and proposed surprises.

Only Goldi sat, pale and silent, and a single tear trickled down her little cheek. Before anyone noticed, she impatiently dashed it away, grabbed a currant scone from the platter, and for the rest of the meal she slowly broke the small baked treat into smaller pieces and pushed them around her plate, pretending great interest in the conversation (and if she winked her eyes a bit, as if they bothered her, and her lips were trembling, these signs were lost to all but young Farry in the excitement of the plan-making), but contributing not a word of her own.