Teeth
"'Gnaw it down!'" cried Merry, nearly doubled over laughing. "With your teeth?!"
Sam looked a bit sheepish, but stalwart. The hobbits had been holed up in Bilbo's room in Rivendell, catching him up on their adventures up to that point, and they'd just gotten around to the curious tale of Tom Bombadil and Old Man Willow.
"Yes, sir, if there weren't no other option," said Sam. "At any rate, I wasn't going to let any gnarled old tree do in you and Mister Pippin not a day's jaunt from the Shire, and that's a fact."
Merry leaned back, still chortling, and raised his pipe to his lips. "Well, that is good of you, Samwise. I'm glad it didn't come to that, for all of our sakes. You'd still be picking splinters out of your teeth today!" He shook his head. "But it's a comfort that someone had the good sense not to listen to that old tree and his talk of sleep."
"I tried to wake myself up!" Frodo cried defensively, but he was smiling.
"Yes," interrupted Pippin, "and got an early bath out of it, with your clothes on!"
All five hobbits erupted in laughter, Bilbo the loudest of all, before they collected themselves and the conversation went on—but no one even tried to refute Merry's praise of Sam. Secretly, Sam was preening like a barn rooster.
"Well, it was good of him to say it. I do have good sense. Strange folk, these Bucklanders, but if they're all half as polite as Mister Merry here, then I daresay they might not be half bad after all, queerness or no."