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"You're right; I am ten... and it was old Mrs. Hilldweller who was watching out for me," said Marigold, feeling much more at her ease by Snaveling's kind sympathy with her little day-dream. Perhaps it was true. Mrs. Hilldweller had only laughed, but Snaveling lent it some hope. But whether it was true or not, it didn't matter. Marigold would live in a grassy meadow with her family, and she would never, never lie under the ground forever after she was dead. It would be so cold and dark and lonely there. You would never see the sunlight and the flowers and the little birds flitting from tree to tree. Mrs. Hilldweller said that the dead people were at rest now, but they couldn't be if they were just under the ground. Wouldn't they be miserable and unhappy living under the ground all the time, just in a little hole with dirt surrounding them? Marigold couldn't be happy living in a hole (and it never occurred to her that she did, in fact, and most hobbits did).
"She took care of me for a few months after my parents died, but then she said she couldn't take care of me any longer," Marigold went on. "I was too much trouble and she couldn't worry about me when she had her own children to take care of, she said. She had fifteen children, you know, though I think it might actually be sixteen. That's quite a lot of children." Marigold fell silent for a brief time to contemplate this wonder. As an only child she thought even three children in a family quite a lot, and sixteen was quite beyond the limits of her mind. She would have never believed it if she hadn't seen it for herself.
"I didn't care that she didn't want me anymore, because I didn't want to stay with her. She wasn't a very... sympathetic sort of person. She decided to send me to her cousin who lived in the West Farthing, but when she sent me off she forgot to tell me where her cousin lived. Mrs. Hilldweller was always very absent-minded. She didn't give me any change of clothes or any food or any money, either, and she sent me off to walk to the West Farthing in that condition. Wasn't that very absent-minded?
"I didn't go back to ask her for directions, or for food, or money, or a cart to take me there, because I wanted to stay here in Bywater. To go anywhere else would be too far from my little home, which I love very dearly. I went here because I knew the people were kind. Now Mr. Headstrong is taking care of me, and after he leaves I'll just stay here, and I'm sure Miss Buttercup will watch after me."
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