Sam was growing angrier and more agitated by the minute. Perhaps from the lack of food, he growled angrily, "And why the bloody hell not?"
The other figure, the taller, slimmer one, tutted to the other. "My my, we can't have any of that now. Just answer some questions, like to start of, Why on earth are you two so messy?" The voice was coy, cool, and mocking, with a rolling Scottish accent Frodo found vaguely familiar.
"Why does it matter to you?" Frodo said, his mind racing. He reached slowly and subtly into his pocket and drew out an apple, incase the instance escalated to violence - or perhaps another reason…
"We just want to know," the shorter one said, in a voice that Frodo found familiar, too. "I mean, it's not everyday you see two normally respectable hobbits covered with dirt. Especially not one with such a reputation as yourself, Mr. Frodo Baggins, or you, Mr. Samwise Gamgee."
"How do you know our names?" Sam asked, mildly put-off yet still steadily growing angrier.
"Magic," the shorter one whispered coolly and quite sarcastically. "Honestly, Sam, did you think we'd let you visit if you were that messy? We can't have any of that in my clean hole, thank you very much!" Pippin threw off his cloak, at the same time as Merry did, and both of them splashed Sam and Frodo with quite a bit of water.
Frodo, prepared for such an attack, threw the apples with an expert aim, and whacked both Merry and Pippin on the head, which temporarily stopped them. "Charge!" he cried loudly to Sam, who immediately ambushed both the younger hobbits. All of them were laughing, covered in mud, and quite wet by the time the assaults had been completed.
Frodo raised one eyebrow at Pippin. "What on earth were you talking about, Pip? You are quite something to look at yourself, all covered in mud. And your hole, it probably hasn't been properly cleaned for a year at least!" Pippin grinned sheepishly. He turned to Merry. "And you, Merry, you aught to have decency enough to tell your friend to clean himself once in a while." His cold, cynical stare got the better of the both of them, and they were both highly embarrassed, with a flush rising to their faces.
Clearing his throat, Sam stopped Frodo's interrogations by asking, "How did you know that we were coming, really?"
"Easy," Merry answered, relieved at the break in the shame. "You, both of you, make so much noise that we could have heard you a mile away!"
"Yes, I quite agree," Pippin stuttered nervously. "You both are rather loud, you know. But!" he said hastily, catching Frodo's evil eye, "Would you care for some Second-Breakfast? It would be rather late, of course, but…"
"Yes, thank you," Frodo said kindly, stopping his evil eye after seeing how it did so make the other hobbits twitch a bit, though it was quite amusing.
They followed Pippin a ways, and the company of four hobbits found themselves in a messy hallway. "So," Pippin said, "Would you care for a bit of food for Second-Breakfast? Let's see…we could have a bit of bacon and potatoes, some bread, tea, oh, that sounds nice! Umm…some eggs some cheese, apples, we could make toast, and a bit of sausage would be good, too! What would you like?"
"Honestly, Pippin, like we'd eat paper for Second Breakfast," Merry said sarcastically. Pippin scowled at him in return, but said nothing more.
The quartet of hobbits followed a very enthusiastic Pippin into a small, messy kitchen, and started to prepare a breakfast. Pippin, while in various other pantries and fetching supplies, was unaware of the havoc that Frodo and Merry were creating. Sam had his back turned and was starting the fire. During that time, Frodo and Sam started to quietly upset baskets, pull dishes out of drawers, spill sugar and milk on the table, and make subtle damages to the already disorganized kitchen. They snickered quietly and quickly ducked under the table.
Pippin burst into the kitchen, now an utter mess, with his arms full of eggs, bread, potatoes, tomatoes, and cheese. He stopped dead still, and looked at Sam with his mouth open. "Sam, what did you do to the kitchen?" This sent Merry and Frodo into shaking fits of silent laughter under the table, almost giving them away.
Sam turned frostily around, and looked at Pippin with a fairly angry look at being accused of a crime not committed. "I have no notion of what you're talking about. I've just been over here starting a fire. What are you talking about, anyway, there's nothing…" He trailed off at seeing the mess. His tone grew indignant. "I didn't make this mess, honestly, Pip, why would I have reason to? It's Frodo, and Merry! All day they have been behaving like children!"
Pippin looked at Sam disbelievingly. "And I'm supposed to believe that? First of all, Merry is just a dolt, plain and simple, and, well, doesn't know any better."
Frodo had to kick Merry under the table to keep him from making any outbursts that would give them away.
"And Mr. Frodo," he continued, "Why, he's the most dignified hobbit in all of Hobbiton! Why would he make a mess of my kitchen? Honestly, Samwise Gamgee, sometimes you give me reason to believe you're denser than a block of wood!"
This did send Merry over the edge, and he gave a loud snicker. Frodo turned on him quickly, sending him an icy glare and elbowed him in the ribs. But he, too, had a bemused smile on his face, as though trying to hold in his suppressed laughter.
"What was that?" Sam said sharply. "I'll bet Frodo and Merry are hiding! They don't want to take the blame!"
"THAT'S IT, SAM!" Pippin shouted, quite unlike his usual self. "If you accuse Frodo and Merry one more time, I will strictly forbid you coming to my residence again! Now just clean up the mess! And where are Merry and Frodo, anyway…" he trailed off.
Muttering, Sam grabbed a rag and started to mop up the milk from the table. He had to lean across the table to reach the far edge, and his foot struck a soft bit of flesh. Prodding further, he removed the bench, and Merry and Frodo came tumbling out from underneath the table, wide-eyed and panicked. Both were completely dumbfounded. "Uuhh…It was all Merry's idea!" Frodo shouted quickly, his blue eyes flooded with panic and amusement and mischief and guilt.
"Pippin," Sam called, sarcastically nonchalant, "What was that you were saying about Mr. Frodo being the most dignified hobbit in the Shire? I have evidence against that." Pippin looked immediately apologetic.
"Look, Sam…" his voice was exasperated, "Really, I'm sorry, I didn't mean – really! Gah! What did you do Merry? And Mr. Frodo? I used to look up to you when I was in my tweens, you know!"
Frodo, though appearing fairly rumpled and tangled and still on the floor, looked up at Pippin with a small sarcastic smile upon his lips. "But you still are in your tweens, Pip, and I believe now it is I who is looking up at you!" That caused Merry to lose it, and to burst into hysterical fits of laughter. Upon seeing his reaction, Frodo muttered, "Wood," and sent him even more so into hysterics. Both Pippin and Sam blushed profusely.
Pippin regained some of his composure. "Come off it, Frodo. You have to clean up this mess, you know, and Merry, too. Once you've finished that, you can help cook Breakfast!" Grumbling, the two hobbits started to obediently scrub the table.
This exploit, however, took some time.
"Stop it, Merry! Don't throw bubbles at me!" Frodo exclaimed. Merry whistled nervously, and looked the opposite way.
Frodo grinned evilly. Scooping up a hand of bubbles from the table, he threw them at the back of Merry's head. Catching Pippin's equally malicious glare, he stopped, but not after dousing Merry from head to toe. Sam stood next to Pippin, caught between amusement and disgust.
By the time the table was clean, it was well past noon. "We'll just have to have Luncheon instead of Second Breakfast," said Merry, sighing. "I always hate to miss a meal. What are you cooking, Pip?"
"Oh, I'm not the one cooking it," said Pippin coolly. "You are. And I suppose Frodo has to help, too. Since we didn't have Second Breakfast, we'll just have to have you cook Luncheon. And please," he called as he and Sam started to walk down the hall into a study, "Try not to burn the hole down."
Merry sighed, muttering, "How on earth could you burn a hole down," but when he turned back to face Frodo, he caught his evil grin. "Are you thinking something evil again, Frodo? Come on, wasn't this enough for one day?"
"Quite frankly, no, it wasn't," Frodo said. "This isn't evil or a prank. This - oh, poor, naïve Merry - this is not evil; this is revenge, which is ever so sweet. Not evil in the slightest! Now! Let us commence the ruining of Luncheon!"
And so they did. No plate was spared: the potatoes had no butter or salt, but paprika and pepper instead; the fried tomatoes had far too much salt on them; the eggs were slightly runny, and the pepper that garnished them was un-ground; the bread had garlic mixed in with the butter; and in the soup, the potatoes, carrots, and peas were not peeled or rid of their shells. Only the cheese was spared, but only because they could think of nothing to do with it.
"Pippin, Sam!" Frodo called out in a sickly sweet voice, "Luncheon is ready!" He flashed a demonic grin at Merry before the other two hobbits entered. He quickly changed his face into a serious expression.
The aromas betrayed the true nature of the plates, and were tantalizingly delicious. Pippin and Sam sat down on one side of the table, already starting on the plates that had been set out on the table. Both had started eating, but Sam stopped abruptly when he noticed that Merry and Frodo were not. "What wrong with this food, Mr. Frodo and Mr. Merry? Why aren't you eating?" he asked suspiciously.
Merry glanced nervously at Frodo, but he appeared indifferent. "There's not left, at all, that great dolt Merry ate all of what we had left without even waiting properly for the very people we cooked it for! I could barely salvage anything, but I found some bread that in your pantry, Pip. And don't look at me that way, Merry, you know as well as I that you ate the food, so don't try to get out of it!" Fortunately, Sam believed the instant alibi, but when his gaze turned back to his food, Frodo had to send Merry a frantic Once more and we're done for! glance.
It was Pippin, however, who realized first that something was, indeed, wrong with the food. He had started with the tomatoes, and hadn't noticed the excess salt, as he naturally was quite taken with it and had an unusual tolerance for it. However, upon reaching the eggs, he found that something wasn't quite right. His eyesight, keen when spotting things at semi-far distances, was rather poor at a close-up range, so he hadn't noticed the unusual size of pepper. Putting it in his mouth, he responded to the harsh taste of the pepper by spitting the eggs out all over the table.
Merry started to laugh, but Frodo shot him a look before mock sighing at Pippin. "What are we going to do with you, Pippin? I just cleaned that table! My, my, it's a sad sight when a hobbit can't properly keep his food in his mouth!" His lips were firmly composed into a cool line of dismay, but his eyes danced with withheld laughter, and his cheeks were strained from the effort to hold the amusement in. His mockery of Merry's earlier words made the situation even more ironic and even more humorous for Frodo and Merry, making it harder to keep their suppressed laughter in.
Sam looked up from his own dish, the potatoes, and glanced down at them again, seeing for the first time that they weren't the usual creamy color, but speckled with red and black. His bewilderment sent Merry and Frodo laughing.
At the same instant, both of the once-famished hobbits pushed their plates away with equal looks of disgust on their faces. This only set Merry and Frodo laughing harder. Pippin was plainly horrified at the behavior of the supposedly dignified Frodo Baggins, and at Merry, who normally didn't go this far. "You two are worse than children," Sam said, cutting their laughter short. "Honestly, you just fritter all your time away!"
"Well we wouldn't be, normally, but it's the weather, really, I suppose," Merry said, quickly trying to find an excuse. They hadn't noticed before, but the sky had steadily grown darker until it had become a deep, brooding gray.
"Besides," Frodo added, rather precise and dignified, or as dignified as a person covered in dried mud, pepper, and apple pulp could be, "If we're such children, why are we all going to Rosie Cottonwood's party?"
"We…are?" Pippin asked slowly.
"Why not?" Frodo asked, raising his eyebrow, "Then again, if we're such children, why would we think of it? Let's see, none of us appear to be children here, now, do we? Sam, Pippin, Merry, you're all in your tweens, are you not? And myself, I've already come of age, just turned 33! Hmm…let's see, are those children's ages, Sam?" His tone was mocking, dignified, and playful, but did make a point.
"No, I suppose not, then. So…are we going or not?" Sam asked weakly.