|
Hearpwine hummed a tune to himself as he went off in search of the school room, running over in his mind the odd character he had befriended the night before. Snaveling was an odd name for a man such as him – a man in whose veins there clearly flowed the blood of Numenor. The bard had spent too long a time in Ithilien with the lord Faramir not to recognize the sight and feel of the far off air of the vanished land. There was something else about Snaveling that was familiar, something in him that he had seen before, but exactly what it was he could not remember. He suddenly realized that the tune he was humming had been brought to mind by the dark man of the South. It was odd indeed, for the song he had running through his mind was the last he would think to associate with this dour stranger…
His meditations were abruptly cut off by his arrival at the schoolroom. Children’s voices came to him through the windows and he smiled at it, for it had been a long time since he had last heard such sounds. He paused for a moment, debating whether or not to talk, but the door came open of its own accord as a young hobbit lad flew out of it in pursuit of a small glass marble. Hearpwine stopped it with his foot and retrieved it. He stood up again, towering over the lad, for he was a tall Man of Rohan, over six feet in height, while the Halfling boy was but an inch or two past one foot himself. Hearpwine smiled down at the boy and was pleased to see that he was not afraid. “Thank you sir,” the boy said. “I was afraid as I’d lose that!” Hearpwine had to kneel all the way down to return the marble, and the boy immediately rushed back into the room. Hearpwine followed him in.
He looked about for the teacher but could not see anyone obviously in charge. He suddenly realized how hard it might be to identify the hobbit adult from the children, for they all looked so alike to him. There were some lasses hard at work arranging books upon a shelf so he directed himself toward them. They paused in their motions as he approached and looked up at him. “Good morning,” he said in his pleasantest tones. “Do any of you know where your teacher is?”
|