A/N: I just realized something interesting, and tangentially related to this little fic: Bilbo hosted and paid for a one-day fair, to which everyone in town was invited. They all received at least one present (many of them imported from outside the Shire), spent the entire day eating (and drinking), and watched a show of fireworks that evening. I think we can say he's pretty darned rich, given what all that would have cost. Thank goodness his birthday was in the autumn, just after the harvest was gotten in, else the food would have been far more expensive.
Anyway. Onward!
oOoOo
The first sign of Dwarves near Bagshot Row was the murmuring of their deep-voiced song drifting over the fields and lanes, long before the Dwarves themselves ever set foot on the Row. Sam Gamgee, tending the late potatoes in his father's garden, looked up and smiled to hear their chanting. It was not as good as Elvish singing, to be sure, but it sounded well enough, and as they must be here for the Party, they were more welcome than most strangers in the Shire.
Soon enough, the song was joined by the clip-clop of a pony's shod hooves and the rumble of cart wheels on the cobbles. Sam stopped even pretending to hill up the potatoes and leaned over the fence, to be greeted by an extraordinary sight.
A pony cart, pulled by the furriest little beast he'd ever seen, and carrying upon it four singing Dwarves and a great many bulging sacks.
The pony was of little interest to Sam, and the cart only caught his eye because the shafts were finely carved and the wheels painted cherry red. But the Dwarves! Sam had never seen such long beards, and any hobbit lass would be proud of such intricate plaits, winding in and out of the others and bound with silver clasps that gleamed in the afternoon sun. Though it was summer, all four Dwarves wore woolen tunics and deep conical hoods shading their eyes. Their deep voices boomed from within, singing in a language he did not understand, but made him suddenly and unaccountably think of a smith's forge and the shaping of metals.
The cart rolled on up the hill and a bend in the road. Sam watched it go, happy that none of the Dwarves seemed to have noticed him. He'd seen at least one axe-head poking out from between the sacks, and a green-and-gold painted shield hanging next to the driver's box. In the Shire, such things would see no use, but he couldn't help wondering what dangers their owners must have passed through on their travels.
Many minutes passed before the echoes of the Dwarves' song died away. Sam sighed and straightened up from where he'd been leaning on the hoe. "Well, that was a fine sight, and no mistake," he said to himself, and went back to tending the potatoes.