It was a warm day; not remarkably so, certainly not overly hot for a Shire July, but warm enough to make the thought of being confined indoors distinctly unprepossessing. In the ordinary way under such conditions Sam Gamgee would have been out in the gardens of Bag End engrossed in some task or other, but today for some unknown reason he had decided to seek refuge in the dry, dusty shed. Frodo, from his position on the front doorstep, was rather intrigued to see his young gardener, arriving ten minutes later than his usual nine o' clock, stealing across the lawn and diving into the little ramshackle hut amongst the rakes and hoes in a decidedly furtive manner.

Frodo's curiosity was so engaged by this particular occurrence that he took his pipe out of his mouth with the intention of demanding - lightheartedly, of course - what Sam meant by such behaviour. In fact he had just taken in the breath to do so when the appearance of several youngsters in the far periphery of his vision caused him to pause and shut his mouth again.

He glanced at them. There was a girl and two boys, peering around the hedge towards the shed, casting occasional nervous glances at Frodo. Frodo deduced from their manner that they had been pursuing Sam, and were now quite clearly at a loss as to where he had disappeared to.

The first lad, a short, stocky boy with comparatively fair hair and green eyes, appeared to be about the same age as Sam; twenty four or so. The other two were perhaps three or four years younger.

The lass, Frodo noticd, was a particularly pretty girl with features more elegant and delicately cut than were commonly found on a young hobbit. Toffee-coloured curls were fastened loosely in thin strips of pale coloured rag, while her eyes were an exceptionally bright turquoise green. Such was the impact of her beauty that Frodo noticed it before registering that she was in fact wearing lads' breeches and braces over her laced bodice.

Frodo looked at her curiously for a little while longer, certain that he knew her, and yet he could not quite place her. Then the other lad turned, and Frodo noticed the similarity between the two of them and realised it was the Cotton twins and their older brother, although it gave him quite a shock to see them looking so grown up.

"Rosie," he called, half in curiosity, "What's the matter?"

She flashed him a dazzling smile and approached exuberantly. "You haven't seen your Sam today, have you Mr Frodo?"

Frodo was suddenly stricken with the urge to turn and look at the shed. He fought to keep his eyes locked on hers. "No, I haven't, Rosie; were you looking for him?"

"We were playin'," she informed him solemnly, "But then Sam made off, so we followed. Oh, well..." She shrugged. "Don't much matter; he's his work today anyway." Another smile emerged, somewhat conspiratorially. "Right shy, is Sam; lovely shy." She shook her head after the manner of a middle-aged housewife and Frodo fought the desire to laugh.

"Goodbye then, Rosie."

"Bye, Mr Frodo." She waved a hand and then disappeared over the brow of the hill, brothers in tow.

Frodo allowed five minutes or so and then strode over to the shed and rapped on the door. "You can come out now, Sam," he informed its sole occupant.

Sam needed no second invitation, There was a sudden rattle of garden instruments as Sam shoved his way through the labyrinth of long-forgotten rubbish to emerge, red-faced and panting, at the dilapidated door. Frodo smiled at the siight of him as he crawled out on all fours, uncategorised objects tumbling behind him, with ddust and cobwebs in his dark curls giving the impression that he had aged forty years since entering the airless hut.

"Hot in there, was it Sam?" Frodo remarked amiably, hauling Sam up by the hand.

"You could say that, sir," replied Sam, grinning as he attempted to dislodge soe of the dust from his shirt. Frodo reached over and vigorously ruffled his hair. Sam was about to protest when he caught sight of streamers of spiderweb drifting to the ground like miniature ghosts and realised that Frodo had not simply launched an unprovoked attac on him. He reached up to hook a length of cobweb from his eyebrow, trying to decide whether it would be acceptable to expel the grit from his mouth in the presence of his master.

"What were you hiding for, Sam?" Frodo inquired, brushing loose dirt from the front of Sam's waistcoat; for although it was elderly, dilapidated and dedicatedly darned in countless places, it had been, before Sam entered the shed, spotless.

Sam coughed in an attempt to gain time. With his head tilted away from Frodo he pushed the uncomfortable scraps of dirt into a corner of his mouth, between lower lip and teeth, with his tongue. "Didn't want Rosie to catch me,sir," he muttered. He appeared to be attempting some form of ventriloquism.

Frodo laughed. "Spit it out, Sam." Sam complied discreetly, smiling grateful relief at Frodo, and Frodo laughed again at his abashed manner. "Dear Sam." He smiled fondly and stroked his cheek as to a younger brother. Then, "Why didn't you want Rosie to catch you?" he inquired, resuming his earlier tone.

Sam flushed and mumbled some incoherent words under his breath. Frodo couldn't even begin to guess at what they were.

"IU beg your pardon?" he said, quite genuinely no wiser than before.

Sam sighed resignedly. "She wanted me to - to kiss her, Mr Frodo."

Frodo laughed. "Why, what a terrible fate that would be! Fancy being subjected to the torture of a kiss from the prettiest girl in Hobbiton!"

Sam squirmed uncomfortably. "She's just a little thing, sir."

"She's only four years younger than you are. And you're both -" he paused. "You're growing up, Sam." He sighed, suddenly realising himself that little Sam, his Sam, his affectonate, loving innocent little companion, would not be a child for much longer. He thought of Sam married -married to Rosie, moving away, having children, while he was still alone at Bag End. Alone forever. Without Sam. He coughed, and tried to blink away what were half tears of shock, but Sam saw.

"What's the matter, Mr Frodo?" he demanded anxiously.

Frodo smiled weakly. "I don't want you to grow up, Sam. i don't want you to leave me."

Sam looked surprised, almost hurt. "I'll never leave you, Mr Frodo!" he said plaintively. "I've told you that before. I'll always be your Sam, even when I'm a hundred."

He reached out and gathered his master easily into his arms, without hesitation or embarrassment, and Frodo realised with a shock that Sam was bigger than he was. Not taller, for Frodo was tall and willowy, but broader; stronger. Frodo remembered the days when he had so often pulled Sam, small and comfortably round, into his lap, even when he was twenty and really far too big, and smiled wistfully. Those days were long gone.

Sam scanned his face with concerned, familiar brown eyes, and Frodo thought in wonderment how strange it was that the very essence of a person's soul could live in their eyes, eyes that are the same at the age of three as at a hundred and three. He mused to himself that Sam had always been old despite his endearing innocence and frankness; old in his calmness; old in the way he always knew the right thing to do. old in the way he had helped Frodo through one of the darkest periods of his life armed with nothing more than a friendly smile, a lack of reserve and a demonstrative streak, and of course the brown eyes that were an ever-constant beacon in an ever-changing world.

"Why didn't you want to kiss Rosie, Sam?" he asked, his voice higher-strung than usual, grasping at shreds of the real world in an attempt to drag himself out of the whirlpool of his soliloquy.

"i didn't know how," Sam murmured.

Frodo sank to the ground. "With two older brothers you don't know how to kiss a lass?"

Sam sighed. "You know they're a lot older'n me, sir. Our Hamson, he lives with my Uncle Andy. And Halfred, he left to get a job in the Southfarthingt wo years back, when he came of age. Besides, I don't heed what they say, Mr Frodo; they'd be sure to tell me wrong a' purpose. The only one I heed is you." He knelt down by Frodo and stared at him imploringly.

Frodo raised his eyes to the heavens. "Do you like Rosie, Sam?"

Sam's cheeks, if it could be possible, blazed an even more furious shade of red. "yes, sir."

Frodo sighed. "I'm not the best person to ask, Sam."

Sam grinned involuntarily. "By the amount of lasses I hear saying how as they love your ees and your nose and your teeth, sir - I mean..." Sam trailed off an bit his lip, abashed at his own disrespect. "Every time you open your big mouth, Sam Gamgee," he muttered furiously under his breath.

Frodo, however, seemed amused. The lasses of Hobbiton had indeed pursued him in their droves, once. At Bilbo's party he had soon been exhausted with the exhertion of dancing with every lass who made pleading, over-dramatic eyes at him. However, it was three or four years now since they had given him upas a lost cause, accepting that to admire him from a distance would be their best offer; 'lost to the books' they said.

He patted Sam's shoulder. "I'm thinking, Sam. I'll remember."

He thought back to the night of Bilbo's party, before his last speech and the unhappy confusion that followed, while he was still very young, and floating in a haze of redcurrant wine. Lavender Harbottle was a month or two younger than he was, but apparently a hundred times more worldly-wise. She had entranced him with her eyes black as jet and her long ringlets like spun ebony; se had spent their dance alternating between sultry, provoative glances at him from under long eyelashes and triumphant onces to her girlfriends standing alongside in an envious huddle. When the dance ended, she had led him away into the darkness, away from the noise and clutter, into the nearest empty field, and he had followed without question.

Frodo smiled to himself, remembering his naivete. Lavender had requested a 'conversation' and he had followed in the belief that this was indeed what she wanted.

"What did you want to talk about?" he had asked her. He remembered the way her black eyes had flickered over his face; held his own blue ones in her gaze. He remembered the tumultuous leap in the pit of his stomach as she leaned towards him; the pleasant coolness of her slender white hands on his neck. For weeks afterwards Lavender had been overjoyed to tell every lass who asked and a great many who didn't what it was like to kiss the much sought-after Frodo Baggins. She had even fabricated The Further Adventures of Frodo and Lavender, a far flung exaggeration that Frodo had found intensely amusing. That was the first kiss, and the last.

Eventually Frodo said slowly; "I think you'll find, Sam, that you don't have to do anything at all. I certainly didn't."

Sam raised his eyebrows. "Nothing?"

"Well - nothing beyond the obvious. Put your arms around her and you'll be all right. Mind you, Sam, as I said, I'm not a very good person to tell you." He smiled. "Can't you ask your Gaffer?"

"Ask my Gaffer!" Sam looked quite horrified. "You're always the one with the answers, sir."

Frodo smiled whimsically and leaned forward conspiratorially. "I'll tell you a secret, Sam."

Sam started. "Oh, you don't have to -"

"I want to," Frodo interrupted. For a moment, silence reigned. Then he resumed, "You're growing up faster than I did, Sam. If you kiss Rosie just once, we'll be even on that front." He smiled. "I only ever kissed one lass, Sam, once." There was no bitterness in his voice, only a cool and suspicious lack of any expression.

Sam's expression was one of quite appalling resignedness. "Well, that settles it, Mr Frodo. I ain't never kissing Rosie now. I don't want to be even wtih you, not never. You'll have to kiss all the lasses in the Shire first!"

Frodo smiled at Sam's little ouburst, still reassuringly childlike; reassuringly Sam. "I think if you wait for me you'll be waiting a long time, Sam. The lasses don;t want me now. I'm Mad Baggins the second." He pulled a hideous grimace and Sam laughed although he hadn't intended to. Quickly he recovered himself.

"Don't you be saying such things, Mr Frodo," he reprimanded sternly. "You ain't no Mad Baggins, you're my Baggins, and the only person who says otherwise is that Ted Sandyman. An' he's a blockhead." Sam looked so fierce that Frodo laughed aloud. "Very well, my Sam, would it suit you if you and your Baggins were to make some attempt to patch up that hedge?" he pointed vaguely to the long privet hedge, ever so slightly overgrown, that encircled the grounds in their entirety.

Sam clapped a hand to his mouth. "Bless me sir; if it ain't a right mess an' a half! Your Sam'll get right to it, soon as I find my shears in this mess." He gestured towards the shed. "But you, you're going to sit down with your pipe and something to drink."

Frodo smiled. "Too concerned about my health to let me help, are you Sam?"

"No, sir, I'm too concerned about my hedge!" Sam informed him, grinning.

The echo of Frodo's laughter rang both indoors and out as he pushed open the round, green front door of Bag End. "You're probably right, Sam. You overtook me in gardening skills long, long ago."

The grin broadened on Sam's good-natured face as he turned towards the shed. Frodo watched him for a moment, noticing for the first time how muscular Sam had become through hours of laborious gardening in the sunshine; how from behind he could have been any young hobbit between twenty-five and forty. Frodo did not recognise the adult form in which his Sam was now encased; he wondered for a moment how he had never really noticed the change.

He remembered Sam's brown eyes, warm and loving as they had always been, and mused that perhaps because the Sam inside had never altered, his heart had not seen fit to tell him that the Sam outside had. It was of little relevance, for Sam was bound to his master with threads of long-established love that not the darkest thing on Middle Earth could break, and certainly coming of age would not affect it. Frodo's blue eyes swept the landscape, and he thought to himself that this new, growing Sam was as in keeping with it as little, lovable Sam had ever been. He smiled, still for a moment, the singing of a nearby bird and the absent humming of his gardener mingling pleasantly in his ears, and then shut the door.