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Mr. Baggins said he would buy the flowers himself.
For Sam had his work cut out for him. The doors would be taken off their hinges;
the Sacksville Baggins's men were coming. And then, thought Bilbo Baggins, what
a morning--fresh as if issued to children on a beach.
What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to him...
He stiffened a little on the kerb, waiting for a cart to pass. A charming man
the driver thought him (knowing Bilbo as one does know people who live next
door to one in Hobbiton); a touch of the bird about him, of the jay, blue-green,
light, vivacious, though he was over fifty, and grown very white since his 100th
birthday. There he perched, never seeing the driver of the cart, waiting to
cross, very upright.
For having lived in Hobbiton--how many years now? over twenty,--one feels even
in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Bilbo was positive, a particular
hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense (but that might be her
heart, affected, they said, by influenza) before the Hobbiton clock strikes.
There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable.
The leaden circles dissolved in the air. Such fools we are, he thought, crossing
the street. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making
it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh;
but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink
their downfall) do the same...they love life...
----
He had reached the Park gates. He stood for a moment, looking at the carts in
the center of town...He felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged.
He sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside looking
on...
...Did it matter then, He asked himself, walking towards the ale-house, did
it matter that he must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without
him; did he resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death
ended absolutely? but that somehow in the streets of Hobbiton, on the ebb and
flow of things, here, there, he survived...?
The ale house always fascinated him; the ale house early in the morning in the
season; its flags flying; the shops nearby; no splash; no glitter...