The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien Page B

leading authority by all in the neighbourhood (including himself ).
    ‘But what about this Frodo that lives with him?’ asked Old Noakes of Bywater. ‘Baggins is his name, but he’s more than half
     a Brandybuck, they say. It beats me why any Baggins of Hobbiton should go looking for a wife away there in Buckland, where
     folks are so queer.’
    ‘And no wonder they’re queer,’ put in Daddy Twofoot (the Gaffer’s next-door neighbour), ‘if they live on the wrong side of
     the Brandywine River, and right agin the Old Forest. That’s a dark bad place, if half the tales be true.’
    ‘You’re right, Dad!’ said the Gaffer. ‘Not that the Brandybucks of Buckland live
in
the Old Forest; but they’re a queer breed, seemingly. They fool about with boats on that big river – and that isn’t natural.
     Small wonder that trouble came of it, I say. But be that as it may, Mr. Frodo is as nice a young hobbit as you could wish
     to meet. Very much like Mr. Bilbo, and in more than looks. After all his father was a Baggins. A decent respectable hobbit
     was Mr. Drogo Baggins; there was never much to tell of him, till he was drownded.’
    ‘Drownded?’ said several voices. They had heard this and other darker rumours before, of course; but hobbits have a passion
     for family history, and they were ready to hear it again.
    ‘Well, so they say,’ said the Gaffer. ‘You see: Mr. Drogo, he married poor Miss Primula Brandybuck. She was our Mr. Bilbo’s
     first cousin on the mother’s side (her mother being the youngest of the Old Took’s daughters); and Mr. Drogo was his second
     cousin. So Mr. Frodo is his first
and
second cousin, once removed either way, as the saying is, if you follow me. And Mr. Drogo was staying at Brandy Hall with
     his father-in-law, old Master Gorbadoc, as he often did after his marriage (him being partial to his vittles, and old Gorbadoc
     keeping a mighty generous table); and he went out
boating
on the Brandywine River; and he and his wife were drownded, and poor Mr. Frodo only a child and all.’
    ‘I’ve heard they went on the water after dinner in the moonlight,’ said Old Noakes; ‘and it was Drogo’s weight as sunk the
     boat.’
    ‘And
I
heard she pushed him in, and he pulled her in after him,’ said Sandyman, the Hobbiton miller.
    ‘You shouldn’t listen to all you hear, Sandyman,’ said the Gaffer, who did not much like the miller. ‘There isn’t no call
     to go talking of pushing and pulling. Boats are quite tricky enough for those that sit still without looking further for the
     cause of trouble. Anyway: there was this Mr. Frodo left an orphan and stranded, as you might say, among those queer Bucklanders,
     being brought up anyhow in Brandy Hall. A regular warren, by all accounts. Old Master Gorbadoc never had fewer than a couple
     of hundred relations in the place. Mr. Bilbo never did a kinder deed than when he brought the lad back to live among decent
     folk.
    ‘But I reckon it was a nasty knock for those Sackville-Bagginses. They thought they were going to get Bag End, that time when
     he went off and was thought to be dead. And then he comes back and orders them off; and he goes on living and living, and
     never looking a day older, bless him! And suddenly he produces an heir, and has all the papers made out proper. The Sackville-Bagginses
     won’t never see the inside of Bag End now, or it is to be hoped not.’
    ‘There’s a tidy bit of money tucked away up there, I hear tell,’ said a stranger, a visitor on business from Michel Delving
     in the Westfarthing. ‘All the top of your hill is full of tunnels packed with chests of gold and silver,
and
jools, by what I’ve heard.’
    ‘Then you’ve heard more than I can speak to,’ answered the Gaffer. ‘I know nothing about
jools
. Mr. Bilbo is free with his money, and there seems no lack of it; but I know of no tunnel-making. I saw Mr. Bilbo when he
     came back, a matter of sixty years ago, when I was a lad.