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The fog had been heavy in the Shire all spring. It hung the still-bare branches with jewels and spun diamond coronets upon the brown curls of the two young hobbits in the tree. The older boy had climbed high into the top, his beloved book stuck carefully into the waistband of his trousers. The younger one was too small to go so far. He sat in a fork not far above the ground, one arm around the elm's main trunk, his feet dangling and kicking in the air. His eyes, however, looked longingly up to his friend in the treetop. How he wished he could climb that high! But then, Sam always wanted to go anywhere Frodo went. He often couldn't, of course. He was just a lad and Frodo had already entered his tweens. Frodo would be a grownup in a few years, but it was more than that. Frodo was gentry, as Sam's dad constantly reminded him. "Consider yourself lucky, my lad, that he pays you any mind at all," Ham told his youngest son. "Don't you go gettin' ideas beyond your station. Don't know as I hold with the likes of us hangin' about with gentry. It'll only bring you heartbreak in time." "It's no good thing, this teachin' of letters to our Sam," Hamfast often told his good wife when he thought his son couldn't hear. "Mr. Bilbo was that insistent so I let him go on with it. He's a fine old hobbit, is Mr. Bilbo and I'm sure he thinks he's doin' what's best for our boy, but trouble will come of it, wife, you mark my words." Bell would sigh at this dire prediction. "I know you are afraid he'll grow dissatisfied with the life of a gardener, but if he does, perhaps it is only because he was meant to do something else. Let time and fate make of him what it will, husband. Our Sam will do what's right in the end." And that is where the conversation always ended. They would have been surprised to learn that the little boy behind the kitchen door wondered at what it all meant. Sam swung his legs even harder. "It's no fun down here. I'm coming up there with you, Mr. Frodo!" Before he could move, the answer came. "No, Sam! You're too little. You'll fall and get hurt and Bilbo will have my head on a stick! If you insist on coming along, at least refrain from getting me into any more trouble than I'm in already." Frodo laughed and turned back to his book. "Bilbo was none too happy with me for taking you all the way to Bywater yesterday without telling your mother and keeping you out past supper. Now do you want me to read you this story or not? It's all about elves and you know how much you like them." His voice drifted off as he looked for the perfect spot to begin the tale. Frodo heard the branch crack. He looked down in time to see Ted Sandyman reaching up from the ground to grab one of the small dangling feet, and to see Sam plummet like a baby bird from its nest. But he didn't stay on his back very long. Before Frodo could make a sound or a move, the miller's son snatched Sam up by his shirt collar, and shook him violently, making a repulsive sound that could have been either a laugh or a snarl. "Put him down, Ted Sandyman, or I'll pin your ears so far back you'll have to part your hair at the nape of your neck!" Sam had forgotten for a moment that Frodo was still in the tree and Ted, to his great regret, had never noticed it. The older boy was already halfway down the tree, moving with great speed and an intensity born of injustice and strong protective instinct. Ted jumped back a step, abruptly loosening his grip on Sam's collar, and shoving him backwards in attempt to get as far as possible from the young hobbit coming out of the tree like a lion ready to strike. With one hand, Frodo caught his little companion before he hit the ground. He gently swung Sam behind him, putting himself between the bully and his intended victim. "Easy for you, you little coward!" Ted sneered around Frodo, to Sam behind him. "Easy for you when you have the gentry to fight your battles for you!" Sam came out from behind Frodo to throw himself at Ted, or tried to. Frodo caught him halfway around and held him tightly by the shoulders. "Let me go, Mr. Frodo! I can take care of him!" "I've no doubt you can, Sam. The point is that you shouldn't have to." Frodo turned back to the bully. "Is it always your habit to go around pulling small children out of trees? Get on with you now, and leave Sam alone! Bugger off!" Ted turned, and sidled a few steps across the orchard field. He didn't turn back until he was well beyond the reach of Frodo's grasp, but then he wheeled back around for one last thrust. "Is that what Cracked Baggins is teaching you, Frodo, to jabber with elves and go slumming about with the servant's brat? " The remark about Bilbo almost cost Frodo his self control, but when his fists tried to tighten, he felt young Sam's shoulders and knew this was not the time and place. "Bilbo's a thousand times more hobbit than you will ever be, Ted Sandyman! For that matter SAM'S already ten times the hobbit than you'll ever be! Now get out of Bilbo's orchard, before I catch you and make you eat both dirt and your words!" Frodo's slight step forward was all it took and Ted Sandyman ran from the orchard in fear of righteous retribution. "Are you alright there, Sam?" Frodo smiled at the diminutive boy as he fell to one knee to brush the wet grass from his friend's clothes. "Nothing broken or dented, I trust?" "No. I'm all of one piece. Mr. Frodo, what does that word mean? I've heard my dad use it, too, but I've never understood what it meant." "What word, Sam?" "'Gentry'. Ted called you that; so does my dad, and Mr. Bilbo, too, though it don't sound at all the same the way when dad says it. Dad makes it sound right respectable, but Ted makes it sound like somethin' to be ashamed of. What can it mean, Mr. Frodo?" Frodo ruffled Sam's brown curls. "It means very little, Sam. It simply means that someone in my family came into a little money somehow and died before he could spend it all. If this happens for a couple of generations, they call you "gentry" like you're something special. It's all a bit silly, really." Sam nodded solemnly. "Well that explains what my dad meant all right, but I don't sound at all like that Sandyman, if you take my meanin'." "The difference between what your dad is saying and what Ted is talking about is jealousy, Sam, simple jealousy. Bilbo says that jealousy is the worst thing a hobbit can do to himself. He says it turns right and wrong all backwards. " "I guess it's terrible hard to know how to do right when you're looking at it from the wrong way round, isn't it?" "And sometimes when you are looking it square in the eye, Sam. Let's go home, now. It's starting to rain." Sam, however, was still taking in all that Ted had been saying. "Frodo, as long as I'm askin', who's "the servant's brat'? Was he talking about me?" Frodo reached down and hoisted Sam on to his shoulders. "No, Sam, I'm afraid you're no servant's brat." He turned his head and gave the boy on his shoulders a wink. "You're just my very best friend!" They walked slowly toward home in the soft spring rain, and together, they stood taller than the mightiest of men. |