In the days of their peace and prosperity, they were a merry folk. They dressed in bright colours, but they seldom wore shoes, since their feet had tough and leathery soles and were clad in a thick curling hair, much like the hair of their heads, which was commonly brown. Their faces were as a rule good-natured rather than beautiful, broad, bright-eyed, red-cheeked, with mouths apt to laughter, and to eating and drinking. And laugh they did, and eat, and drink, often and heartily. They were hospitable and delighted in parties, and in presents, which they gave away freely and eagerly accepted.
-- from the Prologue to the Lord of the Rings, "Concerning Hobbits".
---
Frodo woke refreshed in a bower formed by a willow whose branches drooped to the ground, lying on a bed of fern and grass, deep and soft and fragrant. He lay a while, regarding his naked bottom half. Thicker about the belly than he liked to see himself, but Frodo was cheered by the firmness of his morning stand. With all the forebodings of his upcoming journey, it was comforting to see his prick saluting the dawn of a beautiful morning in the Shire. Frodo blinked, half-remembering. A confused recollection of late last night with the Elves, after Sam and Pippin had gone to bed, seemed to feature his stiff stem in some way, but he no longer could recall the last chapter of the evening. It faded with the morning mist, leaving only a hint of sweet fragrance and scraps of Gildor's equivocal advice. "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. The choice is yours, to go or wait."
The Elves had departed before the dawn, but they had left breakfast for the travellers, and Sam had loyally defended Mr. Frodo's share of sweet bread and berries from the hungry maw of Pippin.
"You slept through first breakfast, and now it's second breakfast!" Pippin protested.
"Son of a Took!" Frodo jeered his friend. "You'd eat the tablecloth if you could!"
"I would at that," Pippin said. "But though they say you're a queer duck, tramping the hills and byways, you're looking prosperous."
Frodo rubbed his belly. "Well, there'll be more tramping today. Let us be at it! I want to be across the river before that Big One on a horse catches our scent."
"Scent is right, Mr. Frodo," Sam said. "Snuffling like a hound, he was. Warn't no manner of Big Folk like I've ever seen."
"Well if we're to be tramping, you'll want your britches!" Pippin said, nodding to Frodo's lower half.
Frodo looked down and laughed. "My head is full of cobwebs still, from sitting up with Gildor."
"What was his counsel?" Pippin asked. "Did you ask about the snuffling?"
Frodo cleared his throat. "Gildor said..." He pondered a moment. "Well, nothing really definite. You know what Bilbo used to say, 'Do not ask the Elves for counsel, for they will say both yea and nay.' And no, nothing about the snuffling."
The gathered their rucksacks and walking sticks. Frodo argued for cutting across country to the river, to save the road's long swing round the woods, while Pippin warned, "Short cuts make long delays," arguing the difficulty of the bushy hills and dales between them and the river. When Pippin further advocated the road for the sake of a stop at the Golden Perch, "the best beer in the Eastfarthing -- and the best barmaids!", Frodo retorted, "That settles it! Short cuts make long delays, but inns make longer ones." Sam took Frodo's side, and they tramped off the road and into the thickets.
Sam thought mournfully of the lost beer stop. Mr. Frodo was upon a long, dark road indeed if he scorned a trip to the Golden Perch. But then Sam thought of the snuffling Big One, and decided water would suit him fine today.
A long hot morning of struggling cross-country found them under the trees when the weather broke, with wind and blustering rain troubling them as they picked their way through the wood, uncertain of the direction of their short-cut. At midday they sheltered under an elm, where they opened their packs to find the Elves had left them another gift, filling their bottles with sweet honey-mead. With their hunger satisfied, the mead made them merry, and Frodo started an old drinking song he used to sing on his long country rambles. At length Pippin challenged them to a pissing contest. Frodo accepted, as it was long tradition when he rambled with his friends, and he chivvied the shy Sam into joining them. Pippin won, his stream arching longest from his longer stem, but Frodo consoled Sam by declaring that the young hobbit clearly carried the heaviest balls.
Frodo recalled a time when, wandering invisibly with the Ring on, he had seen Sam snuggled up with Rose Cotton in the back corner of the garden, Rose playing Sam's instrument with her deft hands. The misty vision while wearing the Ring had not done justice to Sam's fine equipment. Perhaps when this was all over, Sam would be able to plow Rose's field properly. There was hope.
A chilling cry broke Frodo from his reverie and wiped the grin of triumph off Pippin's face. It wavered up and down, floating down the wind till it ended on a high piercing note. The three fumbled their britches' buttons closed with shivering hands and made ready in haste. Before they could hoist their rucksacks, a fainter wail answered the first. They stood frozen as the second call wavered and ended in a shriek.
The travellers hastened through the last of the wood under the blustery sky, quickly finding their way to the river road. As they tramped toward the ferry dock, they scanned the distance for horses, for Big Folk, for riders in black.
"Ah, we're in luck!" Pippin declared as they approached a neat hedgerow around a turnip patch. "This is Farmer Maggot's land. Let's stop."
Frodo winced. "Perhaps we shouldn't," he said, feeling a flash of phantom pain on his rump. "His dogs."
Pippin laughed. "Perhaps you shouldn't have been stealing mushrooms, oh so long ago, for him to set them on you. No, no, I insist. His dogs will keep off those Big Ones! We will walk faster if we warm up, and perhaps old Maggot has some news. And some beer!"
---
Pippin's cheery insistence carried the day, and soon the three of them were seated around Farmer Maggot's kitchen table, warmed by the hearth, and enjoying a little second luncheon served by Mrs. Maggot. Farmer Maggot hadn't forgotten Frodo's youthful forays, but he had forgiven him. The only dark note in this reunion was Maggot's tale of a hooded Big Man on a black horse who had said queer and threatening things in a whisper, asked after "Baggins", spooked Maggot's dogs and galloped off in high dudgeon when Maggot had no help for him.
Frodo, Sam, and Pippin looked at one another in concern. But Maggot offered to ride them up to the ferry in a wagon after dinner so as not to look like the ramblers the Big Folk were seeking. Frodo accepted with grace. A warm afternoon indoors in the Maggots' busy household was just the thing. Pushed back from the kitchen table, warm inside and out, it was hard to credit the sinister encounters they had had. As Maggot's sons, daughters, and married-ins bustled in and out, pausing between their tasks, Frodo, Sam, and Pippin found themselves telling and retelling little snatches of the story of Bilbo's birthday party, as well as other news of Hobbiton and thereabouts. The choicest bits of the party brought giggles and blushes to the sons as well as the daughters, especially in Pippin's expansive style. At length, Pippin was pulled off toward the barn by one of the daughters to help with some task or other specially requiring his talents.
Sam drowsed by the fire, dropping off into a nap as Frodo watched the bustling household and chatted with Mrs. Maggot.
At length, Mrs. Maggot noticed that Frodo's britches had been torn during their ramble through the thickets and bustled him off to her chamber. The well-oiled hinges scarcely whispered as she closed the door behind them. "We'll fix that up rightaways while we have a little daylight," she said, receiving the sullied article.
As she set out the things from her sewing basket by the chair under her window, Mrs. Maggot asked Frodo what his plans were after he was settled back in Buckland.
"A quiet life," Frodo said. "Seeing the old home country. I've rambled through now and again, but it will be good to live here, watch the seasons turn, see the folks I grew up with."
Mrs. Maggot laughed. "For all your tricks and book learning, I never thought you had the makings of a Hobbiton boy," she said. "There you went, and now here you are back again." She smiled. "I hope to see you at Yule. We have the merriest gathering here, we do. Or sooner."
Frodo smiled and nodded his hopes toward her.
"Now stand close, Frodo," Mrs. Maggot said. "You'll help me with the knots, my eyes are not so sharp as they were, the last time I patched your britches."
Frodo flinched. The last time she had patched his britches was after Farmer Maggot's dogs had ripped the seat wide open with their teeth, not sparing the flesh underneath. The dogs had held him at bay until Farmer Maggot had called them off and marched him back to the farmhouse for a hot-tempered talking-to before handing him over to Mrs. Maggot to tend his wounds.
Frodo looked in Mrs. Maggot's eyes to see them twinkle. He felt a flush of warmth as he recalled how that day had ended.
"Ah, you do remember, young Frodo," she said. She looked his stiffening prick in its one blind eye. "Or part of you does."
Frodo swallowed, not knowing what to say. Mrs. Maggot's broad, cheerful face was much as he remembered it, a little rounder, the smile broader, the laugh lines deeper. Silver threaded her thick brown hair. The curves of her rump and belly had prospered, but she wore them well, and her breasts had burgeoned in turn, the little apples he remembered now full and round and softening downward after they had fed her brood of little Maggot boys and girls.
