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Fordogrim stood up grandly from his table as the lasses approached with their grand dam, motioning to Gerdy and Fatty to rise as well. His cousins’ eyes were as saucers as they got to their feet, for they were bachelors both, and shy around lasses. Like most hobbits, they looked forward to settling down someday, but as yet their minds had not wandered too far from their work. For his part, Fordogrim enjoyed the company of a pretty maid but had little inclination toward marriage, enjoying, as he said to his friends repeatedly, “the leisure to eat my second breakfast and elevenses whenever and wherever I please, and the freedom of popping out to the local for an ale at any hour.” So it was with a purely aesthetic and somewhat disinterested enjoyment that he gazed upon Lilly and Rose as they approached.
Stepping forward from the table he dropped them a bow that would have been grand in someone of more normal height, but being as he was but barely 24 inches tall, it merely emphasized his extreme smallness. Standing erect once more he addressed the women in as polite a tone as he could muster. “Thank you very much for accepting of our invitation, ladies, for we are three strangers to these here parts. What is more, for all that we are unfamiliar with this part of the Shire, we’re all too familiar of each other, having spent so much time together that there’s little new to say. It will be a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” And with that he bowed once more. Before anyone could recover from this display, tiny Fordogrim leapt toward the extra chairs that Tim had smartly provided and held them out in turn for each of the ladies. As he seated them he introduced himself and his cousins (“This here is Fatty, whose name, you’ll note, doesn’t fit him – not yet at least, but we’re hoping to get him fed up on this trip a bit more! And this is his brother Gerdy – a right good worker, and as steady a fellow as you’d like to meet!”). When he had pushed in all three chairs (and spent, if the truth be told, a little longer doing so with Rose and Lilly than with Violet), Fordogrim sat himself at the table and called out to Ruby for more food, “so as we three can keep you three better company.”
When all were settled he turned to Lilly and Rose (whom he had quite cannily seated directly across from himself, the better to see their faces; Violet he had sat as his right hand, facing the cousins) and asked if they had heard of the party that was to be held at the Inn this night? “For,” he said, “it’s to be a grand affair in celebration of my very own ales and lagers. And there’s sure to be ever so much to do at it. Singing and people as meeting with one another…and dancing, to be sure!” And here he looked at the younger lasses with a decided twinkle in his eye.
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