"If Mrs. Scuttle is your mother's uncle's widow," Frodo said the next morning, "then she must be your great-aunt." He and Sam had gone out to find the old lady's cottage; the innkeeper had given them directions to the Northmoor lane.
"I suppose she is," Sam replied.
"You've never spoken of her."
"I didn't know about her," Sam admitted. "'Cept for what the Gaffer's told me about courting Mum and his young days hereabouts, I never heard about her family at all! If what Ham says is true, 'tis no wonder Aunt Lula never came back here, not if Uncle Andy wanted to marry her and still's got hard feelings over it all these years later. He never married anybody else." He wondered how Uncle Andy would take it if Aunt Lula did agree to come care for the Gaffer and took up with him. There'd be hard feelings all right!
They found the lane easily and walked up its winding length between gorse-covered hillocks, until they came to a cottage halfway up the hillside with a neat and pretty little garden full of spring flowers on the slope beneath it. "This must be it," said Frodo.
Sam was surprised, for the cottage was an impressive-looking residence--not as large and fine as Bag End or the Old Baggins Place, but bigger than the type of bungalow he'd expected a great-aunt of his to live in. But he couldn't say Frodo was mistaken: the post box by the gate clearly read "Mrs. Edda Scuttle."
Frodo opened the gate and stepped back to let Sam go in first. "After all, she is a relation of yours."
"Even if I never seen her before, and she don't know me," Sam agreed. He went up the stone steps to the door and, feeling somewhat timid, tugged on the bell-pull.
The door was answered by a maidservant in a neat lace cap and white apron, who looked them over with curiosity.
"Is Mrs. Scuttle in please?" Frodo requested. "We'd like to see if, if she's receiving visitors."
"I'll go 'n' ask, sir," the maid replied. "Can I tell her who you are?"
They gave their names, and the maid curtseyed and left them standing on the doorstep while she consulted her mistress in some room far down the tunnel that wound into the hill. She returned a few minutes later to announce, "Missus'll see you. Come this way," and led them down the same tunnel into a parlor where Mrs. Scuttle sat.
Mrs. Scuttle was a very old lady, well past one hundred, tiny and wrinkled as a piece of dried fruit, but she gave her unexpected visitors a sharp, studying gaze before she dismissed the maid and said, "Gamgee, is it? You're no Gamgees I am acquainted with, neither one of you. Who're you lads, and what is it you want?"
Faced with such abrupt questions, Sam found his tongue. "I'm Samwise Gamgee, ma'am, and not from these parts. I've come from Hobbiton. Me, and my friend here--this is Mr. Frodo Baggins, the detective. You knew my mother, Bell Goodchild."
"Bell?" the old lady exclaimed. "Stars above! You're one of the gardener's children."
"Yes'm, that's right."
"I wouldn't have guessed. You've almost the look of a gentleman about you..." She looked Sam over again, "although I believe I can see the resemblance now."
"I'm a gardener myself," Sam responded, feeling that he had to stand up for himself as well as the Gaffer. "There's naught wrong with looking after a garden, ma'am. You might even say so yourself, seeing as you've got a nice, pretty garden here of your own."
"Indeed," the old lady conceded. "At least, your father was a good, honest work-a-day hobbit, and gave our Bell a home to stay put in. Her sister ran off disgracefully with a traveling man."
"It's the sister we've come about, Mrs. Scuttle," Frodo intervened. "We've been sent to find her."
"Ah, I guessed you hadn't come all the way from Hobbiton to talk about gardening." Mrs. Scuttle fixed her sharp eyes on Frodo. "Now what would a detective want with a niece of mine? Is there a legacy for her? Or has she done something wrong?"
"It's for my father," Sam said simply. "He wants to see her."
She chuckled. "I should think he'd be glad to see the last of her. Good riddance, I'd say, and I advise the same to you."
"Then you don't know her whereabouts?" asked Frodo.
Mrs. Scuttle shook her head. "She might be anywhere in the Shire. A wild one and a wanderer, that girl was--though she must be well on eighty now and no girl anymore. I haven't seen her since my first husband's funeral."
"You've had no word from her? No letters?"
She shook her head again. "We didn't part on good terms, and never kept correspondence with each other."
Sam believed her, but wondered if she was keeping something back. Out of spite for Aunt Lula, or for him and the Gaffer?
Frodo seemed doubtful too. "What about her parents?" he asked after pondering his next move.
"Parents?" Mrs. Scuttle echoed, surprised. "They've been dead sixty years and more!"
"But you corresponded with them while they were alive, before their daughters came here to live?"
"Yes, of course," she said reluctantly.
"What was their address?" asked Frodo. "The name of their house?"
"I don't recall," the old lady answered. "It was a very long time ago, Mr. Baggins, and I no longer know what's happened to my old address book."
Since Mrs. Scuttle could tell them no more, there was nothing to do but return to the inn.
"I'm sure she knows more than she told us," Frodo said once they were back in the common room. "My best guess is that your aunt Lula has gone to her old home-town, and perhaps even her old family house."
"That's why you asked the old lady about it?" asked Sam.
"It seemed a reasonable idea," Frodo explained. "The Goodchilds of Greenholm were her near relatives. Even if she hadn't taken in their daughters herself, she must have been on respectably good terms with them before their deaths. I was sure she must have their old address. I suspect she does still."
"But she won't give it to us," Sam said glumly. "'The gardener's children' aren't good enough for the likes of her. I wondered if there wasn't sommat of the sort behind it all the time. We hardly ever heard tell of Mum's family, and now I know why. They thought she'd married beneath her when she went off to the Gaffer, and must've thought Aunt Lula did the same."
"You can't take the opinion of one old lady for the feelings of a whole family, especially when they aren't around to speak for themselves," Frodo consoled him. He put his hand on Sam's arm, and leaned his head gently against his friend's. "You mustn't take her snobbery to heart. You've nothing in the world to feel ashamed of, Sam, not for yourself or any of your family. Rather the contrary. I know how wonderful you are, better than anyone can, and if this Mrs. Scuttle doesn't deign to know you or recognize your worth, then it's her loss." He kissed Sam on the temple. "Never mind. We'll go on with our search."
"At Greenholm?" asked Sam, comforted. Frodo's words meant far more to him than anything a snappish and ill-tempered great-aunt could say.
"It's where we meant to try next in any case," Frodo replied. "Don't give up hope, Sam. We'll find her yet."
They were packing their bags, preparing to leave, when the inn-keeper came to their room to tell them that a messenger had arrived for them. Frodo went out into the hallway to find Mrs. Scuttle's maid-servant there.
"Missus said she found this, and bid me bring it to you," she explained, holding out a folded square of paper to him. "She said 'I don't know what good it'll do you, but it might be some use.'"
Frodo thanked her, and opened the note. There was no message, only an address:
Mr. & Mrs. Goodchild Foxglove Cottage outside Greenholm Westfarthing
"Foxglove Cottage!" Frodo cried as he returned to the room to show Sam the note. "It's her old family home. I feel sure she's there."
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