The first guests for Dora's birthday party began to arrive shortly before noon the next day, just in time for luncheon.. Tea and supper would also be provided, but between these regular meals, plenty of drink and lighter refreshments would be served. Musicians were engaged to play throughout the day, except when they took breaks for their own meals, and a wide circle at the center of the meadow had been left clear for dancing. Games and races were planned for children of various ages, and more complicated contests for adults. Prizes were to be given. It was a beautiful, sunny summer's day, with no sign of the feared rain.
Sam's children had been dressed long before midday and were only waiting for the grown-ups to be ready too. When they heard the first strains of music coming up from the foot of the Hill, Elanor and little Frodo were unable to sit still for another minute and clamored to go down to the party right away. Sam asked Frodo and Pippin, who'd come up specially from Tuckborough to play his banjolele and perform conjuring tricks, to take the children down.
Once she was out the front door, four-year-old Elanor raced down the Hill ahead of Frodo and Pippin and the younger children. The little girl was halfway down the Hill lane before she realized that her father wasn't with them. "Where's Daddy?" she demanded and, without waiting for an answer, dashed back up to Bag End to find him still at the front door and ask, "Aren't you coming too, Daddy?"
"I'm sorry, Nel," Sam answered. "Daddy's just not feeling up to a party today." Although he'd recovered from the worst of his grief, he was still in mourning for Rosie.
"It might do you some good to get out-of-doors and into the sunshine for awhile," said Pippin, who had chased the little girl back to the garden gate. Frodo stood waiting farther down the lane, left behind with his namesake, the twins, and Pippin's banjolele. "We won't have very much fun if we have to think of you sitting up here alone."
When his daughter began to tug on his hand, Sam relented and joined them. He didn't participate in the merry-making, but sat at a trestle at the end of the tented trees, where Peony had laid out a blanket in the shade for the twins. The two older children had joined the racing contests not far away, so Sam could also look up every time they shouted, "Watch me, Daddy!"
"I know he's got good reasons for it, but I hate to see poor Sam so gloomy," Pippin said to Frodo after they'd helped themselves to lunch; Frodo had taken a plate over to Sam, but he hadn't touched it yet and had expressed a desire to be left alone. "Can't you do anything to cheer him up?"
"I do try," Frodo replied. "And he is getting better. He has his cheerful days when he's almost like his old self. I've even seen him laugh once or twice. But then something makes him think of Rosie, and it comes back over him again, as it did this morning." If Frodo had to guess, he would say that it was tying ribbons in his daughter's hair that had sent Sam into this present fit of gloom; Rosie often wore ribbons when she was going to parties, and would have done so if she were with them today. "It must be very hard, losing a wife. It's only been a few months, Pip. It'll take some time for him to put aside this grief."
"Why don't you ask him to dance?" asked Pippin. "That might do the trick."
Frodo smiled. "I wouldn't mind, but dancing might remind him even more of Rosie. Besides, I don't think Sam is ready to make such a public declaration yet. It's still too soon."
"When I was last here, you said you didn't care what people thought."
"I don't. We've decided that we won't try to keep our private lives a secret anymore, but we aren't looking for opportunities for scandal just the same. People will think what they like about us no matter what we do."
"I suppose you know best about that," Pippin said musingly over his plate of cold ham and chicken. "Maybe I'll ask him later on, when I'm not playing." He concentrated on finishing his lunch so that he could join the musicians, but had only cleared half his plate before his attention was distracted. "Hullo! Frodo, look--What's this thing coming down the road?"
Frodo turned to look. A strange procession was headed up the lane toward the Old Place: four sturdy hobbits were carrying a wooden armchair, the legs of which had been sawn off short and replaced by long, horizontal poles. Seated atop this chair was an elderly lady in a lace-trimmed cap and shawl, holding an open umbrella over her head to shield her from the bright sun. Another woman, middle-aged and more plainly dressed, walked behind them.
"It's Great-aunt Prisca," Frodo said. As the old lady was carried into the meadow, he went to join the other Bagginses who were coming forward to welcome her.
"Prisca dear!" cried Dora once Prisca's chair was set down near the tented trees. "How wonderful that you could come after all. What a splendid idea!"
"I wouldn't dream of missing your party, as long as the weather permitted my coming out-of-doors." Now that she was safely in the shade, Prisca furled her umbrella; using it as a cane, she rose slowly from her chair and hobbled two steps forward to meet her cousin for an exchange of hugs and pecks on the cheek. "Happy birthday, Dora."
Although there was a marked family resemblance between the two elderly ladies, Prisca Baggins was a larger and plumper hobbit than the diminutive Dora, and had grown larger and plumper still since her invalid status kept her frequently bedridden and inactive. Frodo recalled that she'd been an impressive and somewhat fearsome figure before her illness; while she could be kind to her favorite younger relations, she had no patience with fools. As she looked at the relatives now gathered around her, a sharp glint in her eyes suggested that this impatience with folly had not mellowed with age.
With Milo's arm offered as an additional support, Prisca took a few more steps to sit down at a bench at the nearest table. "Lina!" she summoned her attendant nurse, the quiet middle-aged lady who had accompanied her, to fetch refreshments. The chair-bearers were dismissed to get their own luncheon.
Angelica had delivered a birthday gift to Prisca from Dora the night before, a butterfly brooch made up of multiple tiny gemstones. Prisca was wearing it to pin a large piece of lace around her shoulders. "It was very kind of you, Dora," she said as she lay a hand over the brooch on her lace-covered bosom. "I didn't expect anything so fine. Angelica tells you gave her some very pretty things too. You were always generous, since you were a girl."
"I can be generous with some things," Dora replied. "I never wear jewelry anymore, and I decided that there's no sense leaving it to gather dust `til I pass on and my dearest family members receive it anyway." This was meant to be pointed remark; Prisca nodded and smiled.
"That's so, Dora dear," she answered. "We mustn't make the young folks wait. And, after all, I might not outlive you."
After greeting her nephews, their wives, and the others who had come to greet her, Prisca turned her attention to her cousins Falco Chubb-Baggins and Odo Proudfoot. While the young folk dispersed, these older hobbits remained chatting about the days of their mutual youth. The band struck up a lively tune and Pippin went to join them. Frodo didn't dance with Sam, but throughout the afternoon he took turns with several of his female relatives: Angelica and Peony, Peony's daughter Myrtle, Poppy Bolger and Ruby Chubb, Thimula Bracegirdle, and his cousin Dandro Chubb's bride Coralinda. Peony, Thimula, and Angelica each offered to dance with Sam; he refused, but the ladies remained to keep him company or play with the babies. As Thimula had once observed, a widower with small children was an attractive object to women. Even if they were already married or spoken for, he and the motherless little ones excited their sympathy. Frodo felt sure that, if they were not aware that Sam was 'his,' the ladies would be trying to introduce Sam to some unmarried friend of theirs.
When Frodo wasn't dancing, he briefly joined Sam himself, or participated in some of the grown-up contests or helped to supervise the children's games. Elanor insisted on competing in them all. She was too young and uncoordinated to do well in the three-legged race and the egg-and-spoon, but she won the barnyard call match-up with her best friend Willa Whitfoot, to the delight of both little girls. When the children were tired of running around and the grown-ups had had enough dancing, they sat down on the grass and Pippin astonished them with some of the conjuring tricks he'd learned during his travels with Mr. Grimmold's circus.
At tea-time, enormous urns of hot tea were brought out with cups and saucers and fresh treats--platters crowded with scones, cakes, sandwiches, and a number of deep-dish cherry pies. This last was a popular item, for the first ripe cherries of the season had just been picked and brought to market that week.
Once Frodo had obtained his cup of tea and plate of treats, he joined Sam, who was sitting with his infant son Pip in his lap and feeding him some of the filling from his slice of pie. Frodo thought the pie was overly sweet, but from his puckered face, the baby seemed to find it too tart. Little Frodo and Angelica's son Adalmo were seated on the grass nearby, their hands, faces, and clothing already a sticky red mess from the piece of pie they were sharing. They were speaking in an enthusiastic and incoherent burst of toddler babble that was hard enough to understand even when their mouths weren't full, but it was clear that they were having a wonderful day.
Since no one was dancing, the musicians had stopped playing and went to get their own refreshments before all of the pie was gone. Pippin soon sat down on the grass with the little boys and shared another slice of pie with them.
"That's not going to wash out easily," said Thimula, who had just taken a seat across from Frodo at the same table with her betrothed Rubar Chinhold and his three children, who were all old enough to have table manners and no Took 'uncle' to encourage them. "Cherry juice never does."
"It doesn't matter," said Frodo. "We didn't dress the little ones in their very best today." He didn't know what Angelica would say when she saw her own son; she had taken charge of Elanor and Rosemary along with her daughter at another table. "I thought they'd be impossible to keep neat while they were playing, and it wasn't worthwhile to worry about them ruining their clothes when they're meant to have fun. Elanor's wearing her best party dress, but she insisted on it."
Thimula smiled at him. "You sound as if you're becoming accustomed to caring for children, Frodo. So am I."
Although he knew he was unsuitable to replace Rosie for a number of obvious reasons, Frodo was trying his best to look after her husband and children. He'd never taken much interest in the management of his own household before, preferring to leave that to Sam and Rosie while he pursued his own work. But now, even with the servants he'd hired, he had to pay more attention to his home and the people within it. "I've still a great deal to learn," he admitted. "It hasn't been an easy task. The nursery-maid has been of enormous help. I'm still a little afraid of babies, especially when they start to howl for no discernable reason, but I'm teaching Elanor how to read, and telling her something of Elvish lore and history."
"Will you let her read your book when she's old enough?" Thimula leaned over the table to address him confidentially. "I've been meaning to return it to you for weeks now, Frodo. There never seems to be a convenient time, not since-" She nodded her head in the direction of Sam, who was scolding Pippin for getting the two little boys into a worse mess, but didn't really sound angry. In fact, Frodo thought his friend's mood had improved since midday. "It's a remarkable story. I sometimes find it hard to believe it's all true. The ending isn't."
"No, it isn't," Frodo agreed. "But everything else is. I wanted to write my own story of my adventure to see that the truth was told about me and the Ring, and what happened. They tell such nonsense about my being a hero out in the Big World."
"If it is true, I would say they're quite right about your heroism! But I've wanted to ask why you wrote that ending to it all, with Sam and your friends seeing you sail away over the Sea with the Elves. It's a beautiful ending to the story, Frodo--I nearly wept when I read it--but I know it can't possibly have happened. You're still here."
"We did go to the Grey Havens the winter before last, Sam, Pippin, Merry Brandybuck and I," Frodo answered. "We rode with the Elves, my uncle Bilbo, and my friend Gandalf, just as I've written it. I meant to go with them over the Sea--at least, I thought that I might. I hadn't quite made up my mind. It seemed the most fitting end to my adventure, and it still does. That's why I wrote my ending that way. But when it came to the point and the ship was about to sail, I realized that I wasn't yet ready to do it. I still had something of my life here left to live, and I couldn't leave Sam." He turned to smile at his friend, although Sam didn't see. "I certainly couldn't leave him now. It'll be some time before I can truly go over the Sea."
"I'm glad you've decided to stay," said Thimula. "But that place--the land over the Sea where the Elves go to and never die? It is real, isn't it?"
"So the Elves say, and I've no reason to disbelieve them. I suppose that someday-"
"Here, what this?" Rubar spoke up suddenly. "A cherry-stone?" He spit it out into the palm of his hand. Even from the other side of the table, Frodo could see that the object wasn't a pit from a cherry at all, but a smooth and perfectly round ball of iridescent white a little smaller than a pea. Rubar held it up between his thumb and forefinger. "What is it? It looks like a pebble."
"Is it a pearl?" asked Thimula, peering closely at it. "I've never seen one before!"
But she was destined to see many pearls that day. At other tables, other party guests were making surprised sounds as they also discovered "stones" in their cherry pie. Little Frodo, Adalmo, and the baby in Sam's lap crowed with laughter and clapped their hands when Pippin spit one out.
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