Dear Sam,

Today was torture! Sam, Frodo, and I walked all day; stopping only for the first breakfast, luncheon, and dinner. I found I have welts all over my poor hobbit feet. I was starving but Frodo said we should save the food in case something happened to delay us. Amazingly I found it pretty easy to get ahead of Frodo and sometimes had to stop and wait for the two men to catch up before I out distanced them yet again. Sam kept telling jokes his Gaffer had made up, they weren't half bad of course; but Frodo and I mainly just laughed to make the poor, miserable Hobbit happy.

I got nearly no time to write in today, what with Sam and Frodo walking by me the entire time, but they're both asleep now so I'm trying to catch up with the events. Of course Frodo knows you exist, and he's also aware of my small crush on Sam, but the less detail he gets on that fact the better. I've only let Pearl read my diary; of course Pippin listened in later and got a lot of information. Luckily, being the friend she is, Pearl threatened to tell some of Pip's darkest secrets if he ever mentioned a single fact of the existence of this thing to anyone.

I feel so tired from the days march, but the other two blame it on my lack of proper meals, Sam says I'll end up being so skinny I might whither away into nothing, Frodo added that I would start scaring away boys if I got any thinner. I don't think even if I was stick-thin boys would leave me alone, but it's something to keep in mind…...

I hope we make it to Bree soon; I don't like traveling so much. Sam looked like he would absolutely die if he woke up and found it wasn't some bad dream tomorrow, I felt so sorry for him I gave him most of my dinner. I wasn't very hungry then, but now I'm starting regret it. I happened to find a river a little south of camp and without the others; I went off and took a quick bath. I came back and found them rifling through my backpack, obviously unpleased with all the beauty stuff I had decided to bring along with me. I gave them both a good cuff round the ears for going through my stuff, then thanked the gods above I had hidden my diary in my pillow in the beginning of the day.

We all were lying close to each other last night since it's chilly and the boys couldn't get a fire going. I'm planning to snuggle closer to Sam before I fall asleep and see how everything turns out tomorrow morning. I'm hoping in the time he's out of Rosie's grasp he'll warm up some more to me, you never know it might work.

Oh I just remembered I caught a rabbit earlier this evening! I skinned it myself and dried it for later use. Frodo was used to me catching food already, but I think Sam was a little amazed, if not sickened, that I had managed to catch the thing to begin with.

Hope I'll get some time tomorrow night to tell you if my plan with Sam amounts to anything…good night.