Chapter Text
"The giant fell arse over tip and Nob woke to find his mam standing by him with a wet dish-clout in her hand."
Frodo stopped in his tracks and Sam took the opportunity to tuck a morsel of dried apple into his cheek. The landlord at The Dry Bob had been persuaded to give them a packed lunch but the stale pasty and turnip pickle had made no dint in Sam's appetite.
"Not a clean handkerchief?"
"No, sir. They were as poor as rats. Nob had traded the family cow for a sack of seed taters and fallen into a bog-hole after too much ale at the Pig and Skittles. He raved for a sennight."
"So the golden eggs were a fever dream?" asked Frodo, producing one of Marigold's laundry receipts from his coat pocket and pressing out the creases against his sleeve.
"Aye, but Nob became a dab hand at tater farming and married a Hardbottom from Pincup. They had thirteen children and my Great-aunt Olrun was the -- "
"The Westfarthing version of 'Nob and the Bean-stalk' is similar to the rest," observed Frodo, and sat down on the granite milestone with an expression on his face that spoke of a 'note' in the offing, "but Southfarthing Nob climbs a grapevine and in the Eastfarthing -- "
He patted his pockets thrice over, then shook out the handkerchief which he had thrust inside his shirt cuff at breakfast. "The fellow meets with an unfortunate accident due to broad bean wilt. Where is my pencil?"
Sam was not surprised that Buckland Nob had been the dullest quill in the holder. No one with an ounce of common sense would trust his neck to a legume when it was well-known that squash vines led to Giant Hickathrift's cloud-top smial.
"Spring sown broad beans or autumn sown?" he asked, unable to suppress a flicker of professional interest.
"I haven't a clue; I didn't ask him. My No-blot pencil --"
"You knew Nob o' Tighfield?" said Sam, impressed that his master's extensive connections should include a cowherd from the Westmarch whose fondness for Nut Brown Ale was still a byword in the district.
"I hate to cast aspersions on your lineage," answered Frodo, his eyes falling to the laundry receipt as if he had forgotten what he had planned to do with it, "but 'Nob' is a fabrication. In any case, the Westfarthing version of the tale is obviously derivative. He was born in Willowbottom near the confluence of the Thistle Brook and the Shirebourne."
"Ah," said Sam, who had followed this explanation with some difficulty. He could offer no opinions on Nob's failure to maintain a healthy bean crop as soil conditions beyond the Stock Road were a matter of hearsay to a Gamgee, but he felt that vegetable marrows would, on the whole, have been a safer choice for a novice gardener. "They're tetchy buggers."
"Just so, but Cousin Bilbo devised a simple method of illustrating the relationship between folktale traditions. If Eastfarthing Nob were here," explained Frodo, pointing to the bottom line on Marigold's laundry receipt which said three pairs of linen drawers, sixpence, "then Tighfield or Sackville Nob would be here, in the vicinity of my pillow cases, and subsequent Nobs would form ranks at the top next to parlour curtains half a crown. A series of lines drawn from Eastfarthing Nob to his branching descendants would produce a longfather-tree of 'Nob and the Bean-stalk.' Quite elegant, don't you think?"
Sam studied the scrap of paper but he was unable to make sense of the arrangement when the original receipt was of greater consequence to him than an entire waggon-load of Nobs. Linen drawers...
"I meant broad beans, not tales. They don't thrive in damp weather and if you crowd them together -- " He faltered. It was hard to pin down the purpose of the archly raised eyebrow but he rather thought it was directed at him. "Sir?"
"Nor do I," said Frodo a little abstractedly, and extended a handful of honeyberries which were freckled with lint from his coat pocket. "Enjoy damp weather, that is. Have I touched on your weakness for digression?"
"You might 'a' done," replied Sam, frowning at the purple fruit. He wondered if the Gaffer would countenance his growing a berry at Bag End that looked like Ted Sandyman's willie warbler or if he would perceive the likeness. "But you told me as how Eastfarthing Nob had a mishap in the garden and I -- "
"That was five minutes ago. I showed you Bilbo's invention as best I could without a pencil -- I know you were listening because you repeated the words 'linen drawers' -- and your response was I meant broad beans. Did you miss part of the conversation or have my wits gone west as well as my pencil?"
Sam was loath to confess that he had lost track of the to and fro shortly after the broad bean wilt and had only picked it up again upon mention of his master's underwear. If he had said the words aloud -- and since the previous night they had become more than a commonplace for what went beneath Frodo's breeches and over his privates -- he would have to mind his tongue in future.
"Mr. Bilbo was a hobbit of great invention, sir, but our Nob can't have been a figment 'cos if he was there'd be no accounting for Great-aunt Olrun."
"Bother your Great-aunt," said Frodo, twisting the receipt into a knot. "I've weathered Aunt Dora's guidance on numerous occasions without in the least being able to account for her. I don't grasp the relevance of Nob, but we can discuss it the moment I find my pencil. Have you seen it?"
"Unless I misremember -- " If Frodo was agreeable he could order six berry plants from Shrewe and Woodshall and bung them in below the scullery windows where they might escape the Gaffer's disapproval. Newfanglement, he'd call it, seeing as how the blackcurrants yielded ten pounds a bush and the raspberries four or five in a yard of row. "You put it behind your ear at lunch and when I'd finished the tale of Halfast's Tree-man you made a note on your cuff and I never saw it after. It was a mite tiddly by then, sir, begging your pardon. Shall I fetch out the travelling inkwell?"
"Not for a few square inches of paper. I was so flustered this morning that I packed my notebook with the soiled handkerchiefs by mistake. You've no idea how dismayed I was to see the pease pudding turn up at breakfast as if we hadn't just forced down what I'd hoped were the last fossilized remnants. And I hardly slept a wink."
"My wax pencil --" Sam had passed the hours before dawn in a state of utter wakefulness, but he was certain that Frodo had been dead to the world until the rattle of iron-shod wheels in the courtyard had sent him tumbling out of bed with the fustian blanket round his middle. Sam had feigned a snore for several attentive bliss-filled minutes and then had asked, in a voice that suggested a reluctance to leave the comforts of The Dry Bob, what o'clock it was. He had been powerless to do otherwise as his morning glory had proven more pressing than the bristled mattress and once Frodo had fastened the multitude of buttons on his wool breeches and ambled downstairs to order breakfast Sam had taken the short road to Woody End.
"It won't do but thank you all the same," answered Frodo and bent to decipher the inscription on the milestone. "Marigold says that my No-blot pencil is completely indelible. She'd prefer that I stop using it in bed though I'd have thought it was easier to rinse out than the bottle of carbon ink I spilled last week. I suppose it's moot now that I've lost it. To Gammidge: Ten Miles. If we retrace our steps -- "
"We won't get there by nightfall, sir, and Harding will send Thor to -- "
"Thor?" asked Frodo, checking the time on his quarter repeater so that he might argue the point till he had worn Sam to the stump. "It's half two. Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't I spot a bracket of chicken mushrooms in that beech copse near Tighfield? Surely there's no harm in a brief diversion. Mushrooms in wild garlic sauce..."
"Harding's mastiff," said Sam, not unaware that Frodo disliked dogs almost as much as he disliked Lobelia Sackville-Baggins and creamed carrots. "He guards the swine."
The remark might not have slipped out if Frodo hadn't left Mushrooms Demystified at home under the pretence of favouring his gardener's advice, but he had failed to heed Sam's caution in the pine woods and at elevenses he had narrowly missed disregarding it a second time. As luck would have it, Sam had neglected to bring a coil of rope, and the tree mushroom which he swore was unfit to eat in quantity was unreachable by ordinary means. His master had contented himself with observing that although he expected Sam to be right about the garden it was unfair that he should be right about everything else; at present, Frodo was looking towards the line of distant trees and the lighter green of the track that had brought them from Nettlebed to the farthest reaches of the Tighfield Road.
"He's thirty inches at the withers," added Sam, grateful that his Gaffer wasn't there to witness his waywardness.
Frodo clicked shut his watch case and hastily returned it to his fob pocket.
"I don't -- Why, bless me!" he exclaimed, his eyes riveted by the pencil end protruding from the yellow satin of his pocket lining. "I haven't lost it at all. Here it is! I'm sorry, my dear, did you say something?"
"No, sir," replied Sam, choosing the path of discretion. It would be unkind to dwell on Thor's conformation when Frodo was a little too pale for someone who had just found his pencil. "But I wouldn't use it again this side of Gammidge, if I were you."
"Perish the thought! I'll copy out the history of Westfarthing Nob while you're playing Suck and Blow." He closed his jacket over the buttercup waistcoat and forestalled Sam's protest with an airy wave. "You've already alluded to your buttocks. Why not tell me the Tighfield variation of Cinder-lad as we go?"
Sam had tramped half the distance from Nettlebed to Gammidge since first breakfast and climbed the marrow vine on an empty stomach. He had stolen a giant's prize goose and swapped stories with Frodo till his mouth was parched. It had come upon him somewhere between 'Teeny Tiny Tobold' and 'Wee Rattle Stilt' that his master was an altogether friskier hobbit than the one who ate his meals alone in the kitchen and refused company on Highdays. Keeping abreast of him was no easy task and if his chit-chat at Bag End was generally confined to it's blowing a gale in the study or there's a soggy patch on the ceiling he peppered the hunt for mushrooms with a wealth of peculiar tales. Sam had envisioned quite other ways in which to liven up their outing and yet the burden of attending to the deeds of Gilden Smiles was far from unbearable. It might not have crossed his mind last Friday that such would be the case but the world looked different to a smitten hobbit.
"Ahem," he said, and lapsed into the silence proper to a Gamgee confronted with imponderables.
Nob of Tighfield's adventure was real enough -- more so than Nob himself, if Frodo were to be believed -- until the drips from his ma's dish clout woke him. A two room smial behind the cow shed must have been a dreadful come-down to a lad with aspirations though Sam thought it better than being gobbled alive by giants. And no one, not even Great-aunt Olrun's Nob, could know what kind of story he was in before it was through; a dream about overgrown vegetables might well turn into a humdrum tale of seed taters and a wife from Pincup. Still and all, a hobbit who came round with his fingers twined in his master's drawstring would have a fair inkling of the inevitable outcome, wouldn't he?
Sam fell back a pace to watch the countryside unfold -- the gradual northward swell of unused pastureland tufted with spinneys and the deep fir-wood to their left – and to stare at his master as if he could hinder him from straying by sheer determination. Frodo was curiously adept at vanishing and might do so at any moment or tumble into a rain-filled hole to the detriment of his second best weskit. Sam lifted an eye to the fretwork of clouds and weighed the odds of another storm finding them in the open. The sky hung low in every direction but the trees that marched across the path at some two furlongs distance would provide them with shelter if Frodo didn't hare off into the cow parsley after butterflies.
Sam tutted and shook his head and smiled at the quirks of landed hobbits. They would be in Gammidge presently, soaked to the balls or no, but in the meantime there was a breeze on his face bearing the smell of wild thyme and a quiet inside which had strengthened despite the mildewed sheets. That Fosco Proudfoot might lay waste to the garden was no longer a concern when Hobbiton was twenty leagues and the width of a straw mattress away.
Fiddle-dee-dee, thought Sam, and dabbled his toes in the chalky mud by the verge. The Gaffer had said that Frodo would 'get round him' and he must have done, for if the invitation had been a whim born in part from the woe-begone look his master had cast at the row of potting trowels it was apparent now that Samwise Gamgee was dancing the springle-ring to a Baggins measure. Should Frodo decide that a hidden path west of the moon was preferable to the Gammidge road he would not lack for companionship.
"Cinder-lad?" prompted a voice at his elbow, and Sam opened his mouth to answer 'no, it's me' like a ninny but his tongue caught on the words under the weight of Frodo's regard.
"Sweet green cobnuts," said Frodo, in much the manner of old Mr. Bilbo noting a favourite passage of Elvish verse, though his expression was less studious than famished.
"Not in these woods. There's a pint jar of honeyed nuts in the pantry at Bag End if someone hasn't scoffed it. Next week I'll bake a tray of biscuits."
"You could," replied Frodo, taking out his pipeweed pouch. He appeared remarkably indifferent to the offer for a hobbit who spent his afternoons with a gallon of strong tea and a stack of sweets. "I suppose your Gaffer doesn't approve of mirrors."
"Mirrors?" Sam had learned to ignore the out of kelter speech that distinguished the Baggins line but the sudden advent of Frodo's dressing glass was a surprise. "Why would a Gamgee want such a fingle-fangle? Halfred is the spitten picture of our dad, and I of him. Marigold and Daisy -- "
"Two beans in a pod, as you aptly put it." Frodo felt his pockets. "Or six beans in the present case. Nonetheless, you're the only one who has green – Where’s my pipe?"
"You've got me there, sir," said Sam, inspecting his thumbs while Frodo extracted the briar from his jacket lining and packed it with Old Toby. They weren’t so alike as it happened. Hamson was cackhanded in the garden and had been dispatched to Tighfield on that account but Halfred's skill with tender perennials was famous in the Northfarthing. He fell lamentably short on potato cultivation, but Gaffer Gamgee excused him the failing as it was not to be wondered at in that climate. "Our Halfred --"
"Which one?" enquired Frodo, around his pipe. "Your lot are as bewildering as the Tooks. Isengrim, Isembold, Isembard, Isengar, Donnamira. What sort of name is that, I ask you?"
“I couldn’t say, Mr. Frodo.” Sam squinted at the towering apparition of Paladin Took’s longfather-tree as though he were checking for blackfly. “Before Hamfast’s day – the first Hamfast and my great-great-great-grandda, if you follow -- the Gammidgys had good hobbit names. Buttercup or Fiddleneck or Slimpod Milkvetch. Then –“
“You’re chaffing me,” said Frodo. He poked a thin finger at Sam’s middle. “Your forebears have been Hamfasts, Hobs, Halfreds, and Wisemans since Marcho set foot on the west bank of the Brandywine.“
“Knocky-Bob will have a fit when he hears it,” answered Sam, wavering a little at the persistence of the finger pressing on his coat button. “Any road, there's a peck more o' Tooks than Gamgees between here and the River.”
“Even so –“ Frodo resumed his way towards the trees just as a drop of rain struck the brim of Sam’s hat. “You have at least four score collateral relatives in addition to those too young or infirm for the rigours of the sweat house. I have a paltry handful. Posco, Dudo, Dora, Ponto, Porto -- and not a male offspring among ‘em.”
“The old lads at the Ivy Bush -- “ Sam coughed into his collar.
“What of them,” said Frodo, “or should I ask?”
“Daddy Twofoot told Odo Bolger that Mr. Bilbo ran off with a lass from Willowbottom and Old Noakes said ‘that leaves young Frodo to take a turn amid the cabbages’. Pardon the impertinence.” Sam’s cheeks prickled uncomfortably. “But as I was saying, our Halfred has a green thumb, too. He won a cup at the Great Spring Show last Thrimidge for his – “
“Thumbs?”
“Columbine ‘Old Winyards’.”
“Ah,” said Frodo, seeming none the wiser for the information. He threaded his arm through Sam’s. “I’ll introduce you to my mirror one day. Meanwhile, tell me about Cinder-lad or Jack the Troll-killer. If the rain catches us out we’ll amuse ourselves in a convenient hollow with stories and rounds.”
“If wishes were buttercakes,” muttered Sam, who had no objection to dallying in a fern-brake but thought it a faint hope. The rain would be a slight thing till they came to Limewort Slack where the path crossed into the open fields east of Gammidge. Then it would bucket down and there’d be wet hankies, short tempers, and muddy feet by the time they spotted Harding’s pig shed. He sighed. “Sup at the Ivy Bush on a Highday and you’ll hear a tale from Old Noakes to make your hair stand on end.”
“I just did.”
Sam’s arm was held fast in a grip of iron or he might have put a hand on his master’s shoulder and given a few words of support. Keep your pecker up maybe or all’s well as ends better. It was true that Frodo had cousins in Buckland -- and the Great Smials, too -- but cousins weren’t family no matter how often Master Peregrin slept in the second best bedroom.
He drew a shaky breath and considered his duty as head gardener. Looking out for Mr Frodo was as much work as trapping cutworms in the bean patch. In ye go, Samwise, and mind your footing.
“Then Miller Sandyman, the low-born scoundrel, said ’‘Tisn’t enough to have cabbage; yer need summat to grease it’, but my old Gaffer, who don’t care for Sandyman above half, sent him off with a flea in his ear. ’Well, I never!’ , says he. ’ If ‘tweren’t for the Bagginses Hobbiton would be a spot in the road ‘twixt Bywater and Michel Delving. Our Mr Frodo lacks for naught but whatever he wants he’ll find at Number 3. And no chalk in the flour neither.’”
“My goodness,” said Frodo, sounding unaccountably cheerful under the circumstances. “I’m flabbergasted.”
“So I should think,” replied Sam in a voice fraught with disapproval. “Chalk and tater starch.”
Frodo’s grip tightened. There was a furrow between his brows that marked some train of thought too deep for a Gamgee but he said nothing further as the haze of beech on the horizon changed to stipples of gold and grey and the track to a steep descent shadowed by sprawling branches. It was no great wonder that Sam’s revelation of mercantile perfidy had left him speechless. The case of Baggins vs. Sandyman was meant to have resolved the affair but the unprecedented fine of sixpence had done little to amend the miller’s dishonest ways. If Frodo hadn’t chosen to cart his unmilled grain to Budgeford on the grounds that a hogshead of stout from the Floating Log and a purchase of custom embossed stationery in Frogmorton made the journey ‘economical’ he could scarcely have failed to notice the swindle.
After a mile of digging his toes into the leaf litter had become three and his worries about Hobbiton flour had dwindled to a wisp of thistledown, Sam began to feel that a fellow who had four score collateral relatives might appear boastful if he were to remark on it more than once in a fortnight to a beleaguered gentlehobbit whose probable successor was Lotho Sackville-Baggins. Nevertheless --
“Halfred won the gold cup two years running,” he concluded in a rush and launched into a vigorous rendition of One lad went to mow. He had reached the verse in which five men and their dogs were sharpening the scythes when a polite ahem stopped the flow of merriment.
“Have I told you,” said Frodo, pausing to shake the wet off his cloak, “that your conversation rivals the Withywindle in complexity? Not to mention doggedness.”
“No, sir, but you said ‘thumbs’ before I’d finished my whys and howsomevers, then ‘ah’ in a doubtful --“ He shut his eyes on the offchance that Halfred’s prize blooms would settle in his brain-box without interference from the frosty Baggins stare. “Storksbill the year previous, if I’m not mistaken. Withywindle?”
“A stream in the Old Forest with a manner reminiscent of bindweed,” answered Frodo absently, his attention fixed upon the glint of slow-moving water just now visible through the trees. The way broadened at an acre’s length and the ancient beeches there gave place to alder and willow carr. Already the precipitous slope was easier underfoot, and if a tendril of chimney-smoke had drifted past Sam might have imagined himself on Hill Lane with two pint glasses and a bench in the Ivy Bush near at hand. Instead, a sudden break in the cloud roof threw bands of light across the overgrown fen below, and a golden mist blossomed upwards until every leaf and twig shimmered. Birchwath Peat Holes, thought Sam, and Gammidge not far off.
"T'ain't natural,” he said.
"Bindweed or sunlight?" enquired Frodo, his fingers wandering to the spot on his jacket beneath which rested the indelible No-blot pencil. If the measuring stick had not been left in the library corner on the morning of their departure, Sam would have suspected that his master was on the threshold of a property inspection or perhaps a note of grave import. His features were taut as a penny sausage. "Weeds are altogether natural and sunlight will prevent us from arriving in Gammidge chilled to the marrow. Or did you mean Halfred’s winning the gold cup two years running?”
"Living hard by a forest hedge,” said Sam, for whom the words ‘Old Forest’ conjured up images of frightsome boggle-boos. “And boats.”
“I see.” Frodo reflected on the dangers of Buckland for as long as it took to consult his watch, then he shrugged as if to say the traditions of Hobbiton are strange to me.
“That’s a pity because while the Bywater District has many conveniences – a gentlehobbit’s outfitter’s, a pastry shop, a wine merchant -- and the view from Bag End is unmatched, I’ve an urge to lease the old homestead for the summer months and build a cottage in the woods.“ He indicated the fern-covered bank to his right. “There will do nicely. I can write my treatise on Westfarthing customs without the distraction of – of --“
He made a vague gesture that encompassed the plentiful sprays of ripening bilberry and the weather-stained brim of Sam’s hat.
“Sir?”
“Landlordry. Without the distraction of landlordry. I could forage for black trumpets, gather redcurrants, tend a peep of Whitwell Stumpies –“
“Did you pick some o’ them spindle-shanked mushrooms?” asked Sam, a trifle pale around the lips, as he eyed the bulging pockets of Frodo’s coat. “The day afore yesterday, when my back was turned?”
“Certainly not,” replied Frodo, glancing down at the uneven drape of his grey walking jacket. “Handkerchiefs and pipe weed. Possibly a specimen jar. What would Cousin Harding say if I arrived at the ancestral bath-house in a condition of uncouth disorder?”
“S’elp my taters!”
“Really?” Frodo placed an inquisitive hand on the side of his pack where a hobbit who was acquainted with notebooks and monographs could see an all too familiar outline. “Drat. What was I -- ? Oh, yes. And spend the evenings in a solitude unmarred by drunken revelry at the bottom of Hill Lane. A pigeon-hole desk, a new stove –“
"Rising damp in the parlour, worm ends above the hall stand, outdoor plumbing.”
“Killjoy.”
Sam had brooded on a number of eventualities during his spell as general factotum but most of them pertained to crop failure or death watch beetles. If there was a chapter in The Cottage Gardener's Magazine and Register about unusually ardent attachments he hadn’t found it although the passage on promoting a master’s rural pleasures -- snugged between ‘Merits of Iron Hot-houses’ and ‘How to Train a Peach Tree’ -- might be apposite. At any rate, he would sooner leave the tomatoes to Odo Proudfoot’s great-nephew than suffer being lent out with the estate to the Sackville-Bagginses.
“Mr Frodo, I – “
“Bag End is a warren of disused rooms, mildewed wardrobes, and excessive quantities of bed linen. I’m a fart in a bottle,” said Frodo, apparently not displeased at the notion. “No father, no sisters – thank goodness -- an uncle who buggered off to parts unknown, distant cousins emptying my larder at Yuletide, Aunt Dora Baggins… We’re a sad lot in comparison to the Gamgees. To whom can I say ’ thus looks the prop of my declining years’? Quentale Ardanomion, Book 9.”
“To –“
“I’m afraid that Aunt Dora took umbrage at Bilbo’s gift of a waste-paper basket. If anything, her prolixity has increased in recent weeks. I’m to marry a comfortable dowry who will support me in the manner to which I’ve become accustomed – I assume that she means fine pipe-weed and a parcel of books thrice annually – as Bilbo hadn’t a farthing, and dedicate my spare time to the perpetuation of the Baggins name. I shan’t tell you what I said.”
“Best not,” said Sam, and walked ahead a few paces to avoid giving the impression that he wanted to hear it. He hoped it was similar to the oath uttered by Pongo Firthbank during the Westfarthing Darts Championship when Ted Sandyman’s final dart bounced out and hit him on the forehead. The suggestion that a Mrs. Baggins might occupy the front bedroom inside a twelve-month didn’t bear scrutiny.
"There’s a hole in my middle where my fourses ought to be,” he went on in as steady a voice as he could muster. If Frodo built a cottage beyond the White Downs or – or -- Not that he had much time to spare after a morning in the study, several miles of strenuous exercise, and lashings of warm punch at the Green Dragon before bed. “Could we stop to –“
“Yes, of course.” Frodo caught him up just as the path disappeared in a tangle of sedge and goat willow beneath a brightness that made Sam blink. “I noted the hour. Who would have thought that we’d be feasting on stale buns under a soon-to-be cloudless sky at -- What did you call this?” He pointed to the waterlogged ground at either hand and the shallow brook spiked with club-rush.
“Birchwath Peat Holes. I – “ Sam was seldom at a loss for words in matters of garden design but here he felt himself on the brink of an unmapped territory more perilous than Bywater pond in a hard freeze. Should he refer to the likelihood of dry rot or direct his course towards the weightier obstacle of Dora Baggins? He turned an anxious look on his master and stood thus in a welter of confusion till the soft hweet of a redstart broke the silence.
“As you know, I’m disinclined to take advice,” said Frodo, prodding his stick at a tussock while Sam attempted to quell the insistent rumble below his waistband. “I’d hate to miss the further adventures of Tighfield Nob because of a meddlesome spinster.”
“T’ain’t my business,” answered Sam, as though he had never wished otherwise. See, hear, and hold yer tongue had come down to him with the potting trowels and the Gaffer’s bent asparagus gouge, not to speak of an embarassment of Nan Gamgee’s favourite aphorisms. But lest anyone should think that he had an interest improper to his station in Frodo’s matrimonial prospects he added, “Tales, that is.”
“On the contrary. How could I finish my history of Westfarthing antiquities without your help, to say nothing of the garden path or the horsehair sofa?” Frodo pushed back his hood and his gaze, as grave as a mustard-pot, fell on Sam. “You don’t suppose I would --”
The skin across Sam’s cheeks felt tight as if he had run the mile from Hobbiton to Bag End in mid-summer. He had done so once, when news of Mr. Bilbo’s heir -- having arrived at Number 3 by way of the Ivy Bush where the gaffers on the outside bench had witnessed the procession along the Bywater Road – had sent him flying up Hill Lane with his shirt-tails a-flutter and no hat. The old master, who was quick to state the obvious, had remarked that Sam’s face was hot enough to light a beacon.
“It’s not my place to suppose, sir. The Gaffer has strict views on supposin’.”
Frodo’s eyes narrowed.
“You’ve said that twice now. You suppose oftener than most hobbits of my acquaintance. I wouldn’t be surprised if you spent the forenoons supposing in the garden shed.”
“I haven’t the time, Mr. Frodo. The leeks – “
“Blast the leeks. Since you must know, I told her that a comfortable dowry was out of the question. The estate, I said, keeps us fully engrossed from first breakfast, when we examine the accounts and inspect the garden, until dinner at eight and a final pipe together in the arbour. I await a letter by return of post.”
“Best in show,” said Sam on behalf of the disparaged leeks but he was relieved that life at Bag End would follow its accustomed course without hindrance.
“Indeed,” replied Frodo as he stooped to study a clump of kingcups on the brook’s margin. “The Gamgees dominate the agricultural fairs. Nonetheless, the smial is too large for a single hobbit, even one with a substantial library. And though it pains me to mention this, it hadn’t escaped my notice that some at the Ivy Bush share Aunt Dora’s opinions.”
Sam had given young Sandyman a shiner last Tuesday week behind the granary for sharing an opinion which revealed an indifference to village proprieties. No one took offence at Odo Bolger’s idle speculations on the inhabitants of Buckland but to question Frodo’s longfather-tree and the odds of its continuance was insufferable.
“If they don’t mind their peas and cues, I’ll whap ‘em,” he said.
Frodo left off his perusal of the undergrowth and regarded Sam with the greatest attention. There was an awkward moment when Sam feared that he might have admitted to more than he should and another of wondering if his master was the only hobbit in the Four Farthings who had eyes the colour of a storm-drenched sky.
“I’ve become accustomed to a variety of things,” said Frodo, “at least one of which can’t be bought by any means. Bilbo, being as impervious to Aunt Dora’s advice as I am, filled the quiet spaces with cousins and clutter but I thought – “
He glanced away.
“Shall we have our tea on the far side? I fancy it’s drier.”
~~***~~
“I expected a ford,” said Frodo, thirty minutes and a pair of muddy breeches later. “’Wath’ would seem to imply it. If you’d grabbed my arm at the second peat hole I might not have taken a header. Unlike Westfarthing Nob, I don’t have the excuse of too much ale at the Pig and Skittles. Where is it, by the way?”
“On the Tighfield Road near Little Delving.” Sam fished out a packet of currant buns made up in brown paper and a bottle of dandelion beer. “I can’t vouch for the ale but Great-aunt Olrun earned a tidy sum in the skittle-ground.”
“I dare say it was recompense for the loss of Giant Hickathrift’s golden eggs,” answered Frodo, who had removed his wet cloak and was exploring the traces of grime on his hindmost end. “I need to be squeezed dry and aired on the hedge, metaphorically speaking. Do you have a clothes’ brush?”
Sam lacked confidence with respect to metaphors but the filthiness of those parts which ought to be aired and squeezed was impossible to mistake. He pondered the back of Frodo’s woollen togs as he unfastened the stopper and spread open the waxed paper.
“Naw,” he said at last . “You’d best change. Gaffer’ll frump me if you drag into Gammidge all over muck. ‘Sides, a thing worth doing is – ‘
“Worth doing at our ease.” Frodo put a hand to his buttons and shivered as a thin cloud passed across the sun. “To be sure. We’ll tackle my trousers tomorrow unless you have a cramp in your left buttock.”
Sam sucked his lower lip.
“Well, sir. A thing worth doing is worth doing well. These buns – “
“Stale,” said Frodo, pulling a collection of oddments from his pocket, “and the currants no less wrinkled than my bawbles will be once I’ve stripped down. A foretaste, I suppose, of the ordeal that awaits us in Cousin Harding’s duck pond. Do I recall an allusion to baked potatoes?”
“Not tonight,” replied Sam, and set Frodo’s scrip-scrap on the edge of a cast-off hankie. An acorn, a pen knife, a stick of sealing wax…. “Maybe a hot pork coddle and a snug – “
He looked up.
“-- tent.” Frodo’s underwear had lost none of its fineness since The Dry Bob but while Sam had grown used to dreaming of loosely tied drawers it was a shock to find them at arm’s length in broad daylight. “Dad said –“
"Yes?" urged Frodo, too closely engaged with the obstreperous mass of wool round his ankles to realise that Sam had dropped the buns and was staring open-mouthed at his monogrammed linen.
"-- summat ‘bout sharing with Tom Cotton.”
"Nonsense," said Frodo as the object of Sam’s devotion vanished beneath the plum velvet breeches. “Your cousin must share elsewhere. If I’d known the accommodations were poor I would have ordered a tent from Halfsnood and Thumbeles.”
“Who’d carry it?” said Sam, a touch of asperity in his tone. He dusted their fourses and gave his master two unbuttered halves of what the innkeeper in Nettlebed had been pleased to call ‘muffings’ but which Sam dubbed ‘hard as the Widow Rumble’s agnails’. He wanted to ask whether the pot of honey might be within hailing distance but Frodo had unearthed the maroon buckram notebook and was seated on his pack in an attitude that sparked a shudder of apprehension in Sam’s innards. Never such a lad for questions, he thought.
“I would. Farmer Cotton or young Tolman?”
“You’d be crushed flat as a bug, sir, begging your pardon, and my Gaffer –“
“How much simpler,” interrupted Frodo, dipping a bun in his mug of dandelion ale, “if Wilcome, Bowman, and Carl didn’t answer to ‘Jolly’, ‘Nick’, and ‘Nobs’. When there are so many of you it provokes confusion.”
Sam was uncertain why it should matter that Old Tom had erred thrice over in the naming of his sons though it was conceivable that Frodo was having some trouble with the appendices to Natural History and Antiquities of the Westfarthing. Or was it An Excursion to Tighfield with An Account of a Curious Bathing Custom? He glared at his biscuit in as great a confusion at the astounding assortment of unfinished or scarcely begun projects as Frodo claimed to have with regard to the Gamgee tree.
“There’s but one o’ me,” he said, the hole in his middle no smaller for the addition of a measly mouthful or three. Perhaps there was a pickled onion left in the crock to cure his colly-wobbles in the absence of a sausage pasty. “Might I – “
“I’ve tried to tell you that,” replied Frodo, discarding the remains of his bun and stuffing the pen knife and other bits and pieces into his already burdened coat pockets, “but you won’t listen.”
“Cried frying-pan to kettle,” muttered Sam, in despair at his want of foresight in provisioning their expedition. If the Gaffer hadn’t hauled him out of bed at five to empty the earth closet a few mince tarts would be lodged in his porridge-bowl now instead of lying forgotten in the larder at Number 3 where they were no good to anyone. One nail drives out another. He drained his ale and watched as Frodo stowed the book away again. It was hard to keep up with its comings and goings. “Tell me what, sir?”
“Did Marigold shrink my breeches?” Frodo motioned to the splendidly tailored velvet which clung to his hips tighter than the skin on a peach. “Oughtn’t there to be room for a hankie at the very least?”
“No, sir. You fill them out to advantage, if I may be so bold.”
“You may,” said Frodo and smoothed his palm across the cloth in a most distracting way, “but it’s still an inconvenience. And after the stories with which you’ve entertained me on our journey – Rowan Greenhand, Frollo Brown, the incident of the well – I’ll feel like the fellow in plum velvet whose uncle pocketed a precious gem and disappeared in front of half the Shire. The last Baggins of Bag End in the midst of – “ He coughed as if a speck of currant bun had gone down sideways. “You know the rest.“
His face had borne the same expression when Sam, not yet seized by an imp of the perverse, had let slip that his tomatoes would be at the mercy of Odo Proudfoot’s great-nephew for ten days at the start of the growing season. A touch white around the gills as the Gaffer had put it. The invitation to Gammidge had improved his colour to a marked degree but Sam’s efforts to familiarise him with the essential details of Gamgee ancestry had seemingly miscarried. It was enough to make a hobbit wish himself an orphling.
“Bladderdash. That lad could charm the pips from an apple is what my old dad – “ Sam blushed and ducked his head. “I won’t hear no more about it, sir, if it’s all the same.”
“I see,” said Frodo and bridged the ensuing silence by poking a sedge stalk down the stem of his pipe. It was a lengthy silence punctuated with the occasional tchah of someone who cleaned his briar less often than he should. Sam waited until the damp tinder had ignited and the smell of Old Toby was wafting past his hat brim before he ventured to raise his eyes.
“Meaning no –“ he began but Frodo had a crinkle above his nose that caused Sam’s thoughts to bunch up like sheep at a gate. “Bust it!”
“We might have settled this days ago if you hadn’t blurted out ‘naked hobbits in the parlour’.”
“Settled what, Mr Frodo?” Sam was not aware of anything that ought to be settled unless it was his own uneasy stomach but his ears pricked at the word ‘naked’. Had he spoken in his sleep at The Dry Bob?
“The fate of the vacant bedroom – not that Bag End suffers a lack of vacant rooms – “ The crinkle deepened as the spectre of responsibility for his inheritance loomed beyond the pipeweed smoke. “The bedroom adjacent to the hole made in the pantry wall by Sancho Proudfoot. It – “
“You taught him a lesson and no mistake!” exclaimed Sam, bristling with pride in the power of his master’s right arm. “Turfed him out good and proper.”
Frodo quelled him with a look.
“You said ‘tell me what, sir’ and I’m striving to do so.”
“Aye?” Sam had shifted plastering to the bottom of his list since the excavation was in the larger pantry where Frodo stored the jelly moulds and an array of white pudding basins. No one cared tuppence for either but had the two Boffins and a Bolger joined their strength to Sancho’s the hole could have tunnelled straight through to Bywater rather than fetched up behind the wainscot of Belladonna Took’s lying-in chamber. What a to-do there would have been in that case! Even so, if the Gaffer hadn’t pressed him to plant them leeks in the twinkling of a bed-post maybe –
“Is it the vegetables, sir? My dad –“
“I have no idea why vegetables should enter into it ,” said Frodo, “but that’s your affair. If the bedroom were to be furnished from Bilbo’s mathoms – a wardrobe, a jug and bowl, a mirror -- it would suit a single hobbit of active habits. A jobbing gardener, for example, though I trust that he’d no longer have time to ‘job’.”
“Don’t you fear!” said Sam, who was glad to have his sit-me-down on a fallen alder limb while ‘bedroom’, ‘single hobbit’, and ‘gardener’ sorted themselves out. He was all of a tremble. “Live at Bag End?”
“You’re continually about the place, and given the multitude of near indistinguishable Gamgees in Hobbiton I’d be surprised if anyone missed you.” Frodo had wedged his cloak under the pack flap and was almost hidden from view as he struggled to reassume the monstrosity. A pair of velvet-clad legs, a walking stick, and a clenched fist were all that could be seen of him. “What do you say?”
“I’ve my own bed and –“
“You’ll want to paint the walls after you’ve laid the garden path. Bilbo kept his golf clubs there and, well –“ Frodo was unable to shrug due to the weight on his shoulders but he smiled apologetically at their surroundings as Sam sat lost in wonder. “Lovely weather but I’d welcome a preprandial nap in the comfort of our tent. Shall we go?”
“Yes, sir,” said Sam and jumped to his feet as if he had eaten two full breakfasts, elevenses, and a hot lunch at the Ivy Bush. It was a paltry answer but he soon found a means to voice his feelings.
“Six lads went to mow…
And Frodo accompanied him.