The Family Jewels by Kathryn Ramage

They all went down the hill together, and into the lane that led to the Old Grange. There was a row of bungalows in the lane, beneath the tall chestnut trees and half-buried in the deep piles of fallen russet leaves. Mrs. Broadbelt led them to the door at the end of the row, and knocked; a very old hobbit-lady answered, and looked astonished to see such a crowd on her doorstep.

"Why, Miss Nettie!" she cried. "And Mr. Bardo too! Whatever brings you here?"

"We've come about Mother's jewelry, Dilly," Mrs. Broadbelt told her.

Dilly invited them in and found chairs for as many as she could in the tiny parlor. While another ancient hobbit-lady made tea for their guests, Mr. Taggart introduced Frodo and explained his task.

The old lady stared at Frodo in wonderment. "You want to hear about Miss Julilla, young sir?"

"Miss Julilla?" asked Frodo. "Do you mean Mrs. Taggart?"

She nodded. "That's what she always was to me, even after she wed and was widowed, for I knew her since she was a girl, younger even'n Miss Medora here. I'll tell you what I can, but I've told Mr. Bardo and Miss Nettie the same before, time and again--I heard their poor mother speak of the list she made, saying who was to get which of her jewels when she passed on. She showed it to me once, though I was never much of one for reading and couldn't tell what she wrote on it. She put the list in her jewel-box, and that was the last I saw of it, and the box as well. I couldn't tell you what she did with 'em after that."

"When was that?" Frodo asked, crouching low before the chair in which the old lady had seated herself so that he could face her eye to eye.

"A week or two afore she passed, poor dear." Dilly shook her lace-capped head. "But I've told you that too," she glanced reproachfully up at Bardo.

Frodo tried another tack. "You've said that you knew Mrs. Taggart from girlhood. Do you know of any secret hideaways she might have kept about the cottage?" There were several hidey-holes in Bag End; Bilbo had shown him them all when he'd first come to live with him.

"There was one in the fireplace of the small bedroom, that was hers when she was a girl," Dilly replied after giving the question some consideration. "One of the stones was loose and there was a gap behind."

The others looked hopefully to Mr. Taggart and Mrs. Broadbelt, who both shook their heads. "We knew of it," said Bardo. "That room was our nursery too, and that space behind the loose stone was one of the first places we looked."

"Could there be anywhere else?" Frodo turned back to the elderly lady, trying to think of more questions to ask. "Did anything unusual happen in the days before she was taken ill? Was anyone called in to do work to the cottage? A carpenter, or a stone-mason? An ironmonger? Someone who might have been hired by Mrs. Taggart to make a safehold for her."

"No... None such as that came to the cottage. We only had a gardener in."

"A gardener?" Sam echoed.

"That's right," said Dilly. "Now, Miss Julilla liked to do her own work in the garden, as some ladies do, but as she got on in her years, she couldn't do as much as she used to." She turned to Frodo. "She was never ill as such, young sir. Her heart, it was, gave out sudden-like. She wasn't ill for a moment, but she was more weary towards the end and there was some things that was too much for her. She hired an old gardener from here in Hobbiton, as had come highly recommended to her."

"Not my old dad?" Sam asked, growing more interested and excited at this information. "Gaffer Gamgee? He lives just down the road, in Bagshot Row."

"Yes, that's him," answered Dilly. "Gamgee was the name."




The Gaffer was busy in his own small garden when they arrived at the bungalow. Sam alone went inside the gate to explain what the group of strangers waiting eagerly out in the lane with Frodo and Robin had come for. He asked his father the crucial question: "What work did Mrs. Taggart ask you to do for her?"

"It was an old apple tree," the Gaffer said after thinking about it for a minute or two. "Aye, I remember--the bole had split near in two and Mrs. Taggart wanted to know if it couldn't be patched. No good, I told her. Patch it up as you might, that tree wouldn't bear another bit of fruit fit to eat."

"Better to have it pulled up," said Sam, recalling his own assessment of the patched tree.

"That's what I said to her," his father agreed. "But Mrs. Taggart said she was that fond of it. It was her tree to do with as she liked, so I patched it up as she asked, had a look at the roses, and went on about my business."

With this information, the party returned to the cottage in Overhill with all haste. Medora raced home to summon her mother, while Florabel and Jaro joined the others in the garden. They gathered around the apple tree that grew beside the bedroom window; it was gnarled and bent, nearly fallen over, with only a few stunted reddish-brown apples on its drooping boughs. The trunk had split, and had been patched up expertly.

Frodo, self-conscious at the large, admiring audience he had drawn, hoping that they had not misplaced their trust, touched the patch tentatively and asked, "Have you a spade or trowel I can break this open with?"

Jaro pointed to a small potting shed at the bottom of the garden, and Sam went to fetch a trowel for Frodo. He chipped the patch away and, when he had broken through the seal, stood back to let Frodo reach inside. The others drew closer, murmuring eagerly in their growing excitement, as the young hobbit reached deep into the tree's trunk. The tree was dying inside, with soft, pulpy wood at its heart, and Frodo's fingers sunk into this softness, until he found a hollow space and touched some hard and square object. He grabbed it and, after a brief struggle, pulled out a carved wooden box.

"That's Mother's!" Mr. Taggart exclaimed.

Frodo opened it. A piece of paper lay folded on top and beneath it, each in a separate little partitioned section of the box, were a number of tiny black velvet bags tied shut with pieces of ribbon. He picked up one and undid the ribbon, then tumbled the contents into the palm of his hand. A gasp went up at the glittering gold and brilliant flashes of green that caught the sunlight.

Frodo turned to Mrs. Broadbelt and offered the necklace to her. "I believe," he said, "that this belongs to you."
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