[Anguirel]

Artifondo could not think of words suitable to express the delight the smell of the soup gave him, and confined himself to a smile. He fell to with great enthusiasm, buttering a piece of bread and dunking it deep into the grey-brown, succulent goodness before him, adding a little seeded mustard contentedly. A morning wandering round Bywater repeatedly-since he had forgotten where he was supposed to be going three times-had left him ravenous, and though he did his best to maintain his decorum, he managed to scatter quite a few crumbs. He had entirely neglected to use the napkin provided. Such banalities rarely occurred to him.

He wondered, as he finished the soup, whether the mushrooms were Cotton's or Maggot's. In either case, his father would regard it as gross treachery. Pellinco Dwellover looked down tremendously on "mushroom-peddlers". Artifondo grinned, feeling the luscious fungal fronds slide into his gullet. Traitor or not, at least he was enjoying himself. The cheddar proved just as excellent; mature and subtle, and combining perfectly with the mustard. Artifondo thought about his cousin in Michel Delving, Gustulo Dwellover, who wrote columns about the relative excellence of the city's taverns and inns. What a job; to be paid to eat and sleep and judge...though Gustulo was quite unusually corpulent now. All such things had their price...

It was as he was delivering the killing blow to the cheese, humming a traditional Shire tune, "Starlings in the Field", that the boisterous young hobbit entered, so confident as to be almost obnoxious. He was obviously trying a instigate a bit of gossiping, and talked very cavalierly of drunkenness. Still, Artifondo knew an opportunity to tell a story he'd been saving for quite a while.

"I'll tell you something," he said casually, looking up. "Do you remember the tales of old Gandalf they told you as a child? Well, a week or so back, at twilight, I'd swear I saw an old man in a brown cloak, one of the Big Folk, who fitted all the descriptions exactly...in Bywater. Talking to sparrows, as far as I could see...just think...a Wizard! In Bywater! Of course my father didn't swallow a word of it..."