“Oh bother,” Ted grumbled as he peered out through the round window at the rain that was falling down outside. The sun now hiding behind the clouds of the summer shower did not bring any joy to the old Hobbit.
His wife was out at the market down in town, fetching some meat from the butchers to make Ted his afternoon tea. His stomach rumbled underneath his warm robe as he put another log on the fire, trying to distract himself from the hunger that was gnawing away at his insides.
‘This rain will not hurry her, not one bit,’ he thought to himself as he took a sip of his afternoon beer, ‘And this wind is doing the best for my hydrangeas.’
The sound of his feet padding across the floor was the only other company he had for now, heading to the large porthole door, opening it up and propping it open with the doorstop he was gifted by his eldest daughter for his last birthday. His hand rummaged around in his robe pocket as he fished out one of his pipes, packing it and getting it ready to smoke.
A pouch of old Toby, nothing better to have on a rainy day! He wiped down an old milking stool that sat in the corner by his hat rack and settled it out on his porch where the rain and the wind could not quite reach him. With a creak of the wood, or perhaps even his old bones, he sat down and stretched his feet out to the path, soon lost in his smoke.
As each cloud left his lips, his old keen eyes looked over the town he lived in with a smile at the edge of his lips. Despite the rain, it was as if it was a perfect painting that deserved to hang in his study. The grey rain that fell on the green fields, and the hedgerows shivered in the wind that blew, though there in the distance the shine of the sun was trying to burn through. It was this that made him smile the most : when the rain went, his wife would return… and with her so will his tea!
