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Elin felt that to comment on Al's experience of beer might lead her in to dangerous territory - she didn't trust him not to infer from some harmless remark that she thought him an incipient drunkard. However his subsequent question turned the tables and it was the woman who was discomfitted. She coloured slightly until she realised that, unlike the elves with whom she had been staying, the hobbit did not seem able to see her thoughts - and perhaps just as well.
She had learnt to swim as a child living at her grandparents' farm on the banks of the Morthond and then when she had been sent to Dol Amroth swimming in the sea had provided a precious sense of freedom absent in her restricted life in the city. Her stuffy aunt had not approved of an activity carried out in, what she termed a state of near undress, but she had not forbidden it.
And it had been returning from a swim early one summer morning eight...no nine summers ago that she had first met Anborn - something else that her aunt hadn't approved of. But then the list of things that grand lady did approve of was conspicuously short. Elin momentarily wondered what would happen if the twain ever met - they would either be in perfect concord or dissolve in indignation she suspected. But her reverie had caused too long a pause in conversation,
She smiled at Al. "I have - and also with some success. More so than with boating certainly. I was shown howand can manage a punt but I was lazy and let my cousins and later my brother row or sail and never gained any skill at it. But I liked swimming and since I have lived most of my life by rivers or the sea have had the opportunity. Of course the Mor.." Elin stopped remembering that Al seemed to bristle slightly when she had called the Brandywine by its proper name, "I mean the River Blackroot , is probably not as great as the Brandywine". She had also swum in the Anduin but she wasn't going to mention something she would have to translate as "The Great River". "Maybe I shall teach Annie next summer if it is warm enough" she shivered a little a draught reaching her back from the opened door.
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