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The old man came around the bend in the lane with a wooden staff in one hand and a very large bundle of something on his back that clinked and shifted as he moved. He wore a tall grey hat that had once had a point to it and now had the brim of the point bent over by weather or by age or simply by the habit of walking under low branches. His grey cloak was road-dusted. His eyebrows were extraordinary. They jutted out from beneath the brim of his hat like the ledges of a cliff, and they moved independently of his face in a way that suggested a great deal of private opinion.
He stopped in front of Bilbo's gate.
He looked at Bilbo.
Bilbo looked at him.
*"Good morning,"* said Bilbo, because it was and because the habit of greeting strangers on the lane was deeply embedded in him, more deeply than most things, and came out of him automatically in the same way breathing did.
*"Is it?"* said the old man. He had a voice like the sound a door makes when you open it in a house that has been shut up all winter — old and resonant and full of rooms behind it. *"Is it a good morning, I wonder? Or are you simply making conversation? Or do you mean that it is morning and you are glad of it? Or perhaps,"* he said, and one of the great eyebrows shifted, *"that it is a morning on which good things might be done, if a person were so inclined."*
Bilbo blinked.
*"I—"* he said. *"I meant it as a greeting, largely."*
*"Yes,"* said the old man. *"Most people do. I am Gandalf."*
The name landed in the middle of Bilbo's morning like a stone into a quiet pond.
*"Gandalf,"* Bilbo repeated.
*"The very same."*
*"Not the Gandalf,"* Bilbo said carefully, *"who used to make fireworks for the Midsummer festivities? When I was quite small? There were dragons — I remember them — made of coloured smoke, and they flew out over the Hill and—"*
*"I suspect,"* said Gandalf, *"that they were rather better than you remember."*
*"They were extraordinary,"* Bilbo said immediately, and then stopped himself, because he hadn't quite meant to say it with quite that much feeling. He smoothed his waistcoat. *"It is nice to meet you. Good morning."*
*"Good morning again,"* said Gandalf. He did not move from the gate. *"I am looking for someone to share in an adventure."*
Bilbo's pipe stopped halfway to his mouth.
*"An adventure,"* he said.
*"An adventure."*
*"I see."* Bilbo lowered the pipe. He looked at the lane. He looked at his garden, which was extremely tidy and which he had spent a very pleasant two hours weeding just yesterday. He looked back at Gandalf. *"I don't think you have the right door."*
*"I have precisely the right door,"* said Gandalf. Something in his tone made the statement feel less like an argument and more like a fact about the weather. *"The Bagginses have produced mostly predictable people. Very reliable. Very good at elevenses. But on your mother's side—"*
*"My mother's side,"* said Bilbo, and there was a note in his voice now that he didn't entirely intend, *"were perfectly respectable."*
*"Oh, entirely,"* said Gandalf, mildly. *"And also occasionally remarkable."*
There was a silence.
A bird called somewhere in the hedge.
*"I am not remarkable,"* Bilbo said. He said it with the conviction of a man who had worked very hard to be unremarkable and felt he'd earned the right to the description. *"I am a Baggins of Bag End, and I have no interest in adventures. Adventures make you late for dinner. Adventures get your buttons muddy. People who go on adventures come back changed or they don't come back at all, and I don't wish to do either. Good morning, Gandalf."*
He turned back to his pipe.
Gandalf said nothing.
After a moment, Bilbo turned around again.
Gandalf was still there.
*"I said good morning,"* Bilbo said.
*"You did,"* Gandalf agreed pleasantly. *"Several times. A very thorough farewell." He tilted his hat slightly. "I will come to tea tomorrow. Four o'clock."*
*"You will not,"* said Bilbo.
*"And I will bring some friends."*
*"I haven't invited you—"*
*"No,"* said Gandalf. He had already begun to turn away up the lane, his staff making small marks in the soft earth. *"You haven't. That's rather the point of unexpected parties."*
He rounded the bend.
He was gone.
Bilbo sat with his pipe and looked at the gate for a long time.
*"Confounded old man,"* he said to no one in particular.
But when he went inside to make his second breakfast — eggs, toast, mushrooms, tomato, and a small pot of his better honey — he found that his hands were not entirely steady, and that somewhere deep in his chest, in a place he had not heard from in many years, something very small was beating its wings.
---
He ignored it firmly and ate his breakfast.
It kept beating anyway.
---
*James Wood turned the page.*
He didn't notice that he'd turned it. He didn't notice that forty minutes had gone by, or that his tea had gone cold on the table beside him, or that he'd shifted from sitting upright to leaning forward with both elbows on his knees, the book held in both hands.
He read the next line.
He turned the next page.
Outside, somewhere on the street, a car alarm started and stopped. A neighbor's dog barked twice at something. The refrigerator hummed.
James Wood didn't hear any of it.