10.49 am

"Oy, watch it Merry, I can't concentrate on this with you looming up behind me!" said Folco Boffin.

The scene was a strange one. Folco had taken up one of the smaller internal bedrooms usually shut up or used as an extension to Bag End's copious wine cellar. One third of the room he had partitioned with a large wooden frame, and on the frame he had hung several pieces of Frodo's best white paper, marked out with regular lines and stuck together into one large sheet, and behind the frame he had installed a bright lamp on a stool, and between the lamp and the paper sat Fatty Bolger. His face was an increasingly impatient silhouette in profile. Folco was tracing the outline on the paper with some of the same sort of charcoal that Pippin had been using earlier in the morning.

Merry had seen Folco do this before, of course, for Pippin's sister Pearl and Fatty's sister Estella, among others. Once he had finished he would copy the silhouette on a tiny scale - Merry didn't know how he did that - and have it set on a pendant or a watch-case. Who exactly wanted Fatty's portrait Merry didn't know. Estella, he assumed. Poor Fatty didn't have even as many admirers as himself, nor was he currently showing much interest in any of the lasses in Budgeford, Tuckborough, Hobbiton or anywhere else for that matter. Perhaps Folco was just practising on his friend. If so he had chosen a poor subject, for Fatty had barely stopped fidgeting and complaining since Merry had entered the room, and from the tired reproves this provoked from Folco, he suspected it had been going on for rather longer than that.

"Anyway," said Folco, resuming work on Fatty's nose as Merry withdrew a few paces backwards, "what's all this about young Pippin?"

"I was just wondering if you knew whenabouts he started doing so much drawing?" asked Merry. "He never... I hadn't gathered."

Folco tutted irritably and with one elegant stroke of his charcoal traced Fatty's forehead from brow to hairline. "Well he's always been running around with paper and a pencil, since he was ever so small. You know that better than me."

"I do. But I've never seen him turn his attention to it so seriously. And, well, you fellows have all been together here for the past week and I only got here yesterday. So I wanted to know..."

"Oh, for heaven's sake, Merry!" said Folco at last. "Why don't you ask him? For what it's worth, no, he hasn't spent all of the past week covering Frodo's second-best parlour in charcoal dust. Whatever Frodo may claim. But once or twice when it's been a fine afternoon but Fatty and I have stayed inside he's dragged Bilbo's mother's old easel up on to the Hill and sketched there, or squatted on the flower beds drawing the garden, or even disappeared off until sunset and come back with a watercolour of some of the fields near Bywater."

"When he first arrived he got Sam Gamgee to let him paint his portrait," said Fatty, leaning forward to poke his head around the wooden frame, to Folco's deep disgust. "Pip's sending to Michel Delving to have it framed and everything, so that Frodo can give it to Sam's parents when his birthday comes around." He giggled suddenly. "Poor Pippin must have used up so much red on Sam's blushes there won't be any left for the autumn leaves."

"It's true," said Folco, motioning crossly to Fatty to resume his earlier position. After a pause he added, "Pippin's really rather good, you know. From what I've seen these aren't childish drawings, or even the kind of amateurish trinkets I cook up. He's got a real talent." The outline of Fatty's hair began to appear on the paper. "I for one would assume he's been working on his drawing and his painting for a while now. Still," he concluded, leaning back to inspect his handiwork, "the sheer single-mindedness he's displayed today is certainly different. And commendable."

"And he didn't even get charcoal on his clothes," added Fatty, often reluctant to let this kind of issue go.

Merry deflated a little, and perched on the arm of a rather battered armchair in the corner of the room. "What I really don't understand," he said, slowly, "is – well, that he's taking it seriously at all. And going off on his own! I've never known Pippin so self-sufficient before."

Folco shrugged awkwardly and started outlining Fatty's neck. Merry didn't blame him. Sensible as he'd always thought Folco, and much as he enjoyed his company, neither of them found it easy to open up to the other, and even this level of intimacy was evidently a little challenging.

Yet after a minute Folco surprised him, talking quietly as he corrected certain areas of Fatty's neck and chin. "Pippin's always been a lot more serious than he lets on," he said. "You shouldn't be surprised that he's finally prepared to act like it."

"Pippin's never serious," replied Merry. "He hates being serious. Even when he seems serious it's from trying not to laugh. And he's been the terror of the Tookland since I was so young I can scarcely remember it. You know this."

"No, Merry," said Fatty's voice, kindly. "Pervinca Took has been the terror of the Tookland since you were so young that you really can't remember it. Pippin just tags along, like a good younger brother should."

"And I daresay he's been mischievous on his own account and in his own way too," added Folco, going over a few of the lines. "Climbing the wrong trees, disturbing the bees' nests, playing truant from his lessons, that kind of thing. And he's impertinent beyond belief and there's no denying it. But that's hardly reason to act like it's so strange that he's finally found something he can focus on. Which he has, and I for one am glad of it."

Fatty poked his around the screen yet again. "Face it, Merry, the only proper tear-away in your family for the past two generations was Frodo. None of the rest of you comes close. You're all terrible disappointments to him, and Pippin no less than you, my friend. The Tooks and Brandybucks are slowing down. You'll have to leave things to the Boffins and Bolgers now."

Merry spluttered incoherently, feeling absurdly insulted not on his own behalf, but on Pippin's.

"Look, Merry," said Folco at last, "the real problem here is that you've hardly spent any time with Pippin in the last three years. You don't know him anymore, and I daresay you didn't know him four years ago as well as you think you did. You've always enjoyed the idea of him as some kind of rebel, and you're seeing things that just aren't there."

"Yes, I'm sure you're right," said Merry, vaguely. He bit his lip. "Look, I'm off to have a lie-down. For some reason I can't keep going all day after a night-time walk anymore. And I don't want to miss luncheon. I'll see you fellows later."

He slipped out of the room quietly, fighting a headache and a ridiculous urge to cry.

2.23pm

"Hello, Mr Merry!" said Sam. "Oh, I'm awfully sorry, sir, but would you mind sticking to the paths for a bit? It's just that in this heat keeping the grass green is a job of work, and I do want the garden looking its best for the party."

"Not at all, Sam!" said Merry, walking as softly as he could over the fragile lawn to the wobbly line of paving next to the largest flower bed. Sam was crouched almost on the soil, digging in with a trowel. "Do you mind me being here, by the way? I don't want to disturb you if you need to concentrate."

"Oh no, that's fine, Mr Merry, sir," said Sam. "This is easy work and it's nice to have some company. If you don't mind me working around you."

He was planting the spring bulbs, a cheery mixture of crocuses, snowdrops and - what were they? Narcissi, by the looks of things. There was a diminishing pile of them by his feet.

"May I help, Sam?" asked Merry.

Sam glanced at him, surprised, but then smiled and wrinkled his nose. "Thank you, Mr Merry, that would be very kind," he said. "Erm, could you bring me a few more of them crocus bulbs from the wheelbarrow over there," he pointed. "That would ever so helpful. You know which ones they are, I take it?"

"I think so," said Merry. The wheelbarrow was standing on the path in the full sunlight. It was hot to the touch. "Are these right?" he asked, waving a couple at Sam.

Sam nodded. "Thank you very much, sir," he said, as Merry brought a large handful of the crocus bulbs to him. "I was nearly out of them. I'm trying to plant a mix of the flowers that looks all nat'ral, see? But of course it takes the right balance of bulbs to make it look like that."

Merry stared at him. "Why, you're an artist, Sam!" he said.

Sam blinked, and then laughed. "I wouldn't go as far as to say that, Mr Merry!" he exclaimed, but he was blushing, and fighting a grin.

Merry brought Sam another handful of bulbs and then sat beside him as the gardener smoothed down the soil over what would, come the spring, become a snowdrop.

"I'm not an artist," said Merry suddenly, and immediately wished he hadn't, even as he found himself continuing. "And everyone else here is. Isn't that odd? Well, except maybe Fatty, but he's never minded about things like that, and even he makes those pretty shapes with napkins to entertain the children at dinner parties." He took a breath and brought his voice under control. "I would have no idea where to put those bulbs of yours. I know which ones are which because I used to help my mother with her flower garden as a boy, but if I tried to make decisions about where the plants went then they just ended up looking wrong somehow. Pippin's so..." he broke off, ashamed and astonished to find himself biting back tears for the second time that day.

Sam carried on with his planting, his brow furrowed in intense concentration. Merry had a despondent impression that the gardener was ignoring him, but he was wrong.

"It seems to me, Mr Merry sir," said Sam, "that you're the best judge of what's art and what isn't that I've ever met. Barring Mr Frodo, of course. And Mr Bilbo too, when he used to live here. I've heard what you've said in times past about Mr Frodo's maps, and Mr Boffin's sill-oo-ett things and so on, and they've always sounded... I don't know, sir. Like you know what you're talking about as well as they do. Like you enjoy what they do better'n anyone. I know Mr Frodo for one values it beyond anything. And what you say about your mother's garden, begging your pardon, makes me think it even more."

"Well, there you go, Sam," said Merry, trying to laugh despite the tightness of his throat. "You must be an artist if I say so. I know what I'm talking about."

Sam smiled kindly at him. "I reckon that understanding and liking what the others do is a kind of art too, Mr Merry. And I reckon also that if you din't have your head so caught up with everyone else's stuff, then maybe you'd find it easier to do things yourself. Maybe you know what you want pictures and such to look like and you're worried you won't manage it." He blushed again. "I remember when old Mr Bilbo was learning me my letters, I so wanted to be the quickest and best student he'd ever had, it made me too scared to sit at my books and try. Took me a sight longer than it would have done thanks to that, I think. But that was just me being a forward child, as you might say, and I'd rather that it stayed between you and me."

"Of course, Sam," said Merry.

"Mr Merry..." began Sam, and then he looked away.

"Yes, Sam?"

"I'm... please don't think I'm rude, sir. But are you sure that it's really Mr Pippin's charcoaling that's bothering you?"

Merry glanced at him sharply, but Sam's face was still turned aside.

"I don't know, Sam," he admitted. "I honestly don't know."