#hobbit reference

Once I find the box that holds my markers I promise I will color her in.

Mr. and Mrs. Lars, of Topsham, Devon, were proud to say they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the owners and caretakers of one perfectly ordinary boat, which was used primarily for fishing. And they were the occupants of a very mundane, if a little run down, house not far from the harbor. They kept a routine, seldom varying, and one could easily guess what Owen Lars might say on any given subject without the bother of asking him!

In fact, the only thing about the Lars family that might be remarked upon was their young nephew, Luke. It was common enough knowledge that the lad was orphaned, brought from foreign parts as a toddling babe with a most unusual accent to the few words he knew. And although he learned to blend with his companions quickly enough, it remained plain to most of Topsham that there was something just the slightest bit unusual about the child.

“Never mind them,” Beru Lars used to say as she would drop a motherly kiss on the boy’s brow, “An angel must have kissed your eyes when you were born, and that is why they shine so bright.” And then she would replace the mountain rose and hawthorn around the house, for Luke often seemed more at ease with the plants present.

Owen Lars was not nearly so sentimental in nature as his wife. More often, when his nephew asked whether they found him odd like his playmates and their families did, he would knock out his pipe against the grate and declare, “Utter nonsense. There’s not a thing wrong with you! Don’t you work as hard as any lad in the yards? Nonsense, I say!”

And then he would brood a while in silence before declaring something to the effect of, “Nothing wrong with the lad at all! And if anyone says different, I’ll…why, I’ll bash them on the head with an oak staff, see if I don’t!”

weekendswithgoodfriends >>>>> thislippylakeman