"GL1" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol06)

Bilbo would have laughed. Indeed he was - he had foreseen how it
would all fall out, and was enjoying the joke quite privately.
There, I suppose it has become all too plain. The fact is, in spite
of his after-dinner speech, he had grown suddenly very tired of
them all. The Tookishness (not of course that all Tooks ever had
much of this wayward quality) had quite suddenly and uncom-
fortably come to life again. Also another secret - after he had
blowed his last fifty ducats on the party he had not got any money
or jewelry left, except the ring, and the gold buttons on his
waistcoat. He had spent it all in twenty years (even the proceeds of
his beautiful.... which he had sold a few years back).(6)
Then how could he get married? He was not going to just then -
he merely said 'I am going to get married'. I cannot quite say why.
It came suddenly into his head. Also he thought it was an event
that might occur in the future - if he travelled again amongst other
folk, or found a more rare and more beautiful race of hobbits
somewhere. Also it was a kind of explanation. Hobbits had a

curious habit in their weddings. They kept it (always officially and
very often actually) a dead secret for years who they were going to
marry, even when they knew. Then they suddenly went and got
married and went off without an address for a week or two (or even
longer). When Bilbo had disappeared this is what at first his
neighbours thought. 'He has gone and got married. Now who can
it be? - no one else has disappeared, as far as we know.' Even after
a year they- would have been less surprised if he had come back
with a wife. For a long while some folk thought he was keeping one
in hiding, and quite a legend about the poor Mrs Bilbo who was
too ugly to be seen grew up for a while.
So now Bilbo said before he disappeared: 'I am going to get
married.' He thought that that - together with all the fuss about
the house (or hole) and furniture - would keep them all busy and
satisfied for a long while, so that no one would bother to hunt for
him for a bit. And he was right - or nearly right. For no one ever
bothered to hunt for him at all. They decided he had gone mad,
and run off till he met a pool or a river or a steep fall, and there was
one Baggins the less. Most of them, that is. He was deeply
regretted by a few of his younger friends of course (... Angelica
and Sar......). But he had not said good-bye to all of them - 0
no. That is easily explained.

NOTES.

1. The title was written in subsequently, but no doubt before the
chapter was finished, since my father referred to it by this title in his
letter of 19 December 1937 (p. 11).
2. After 'Burroweses' followed 'and Ogdens', but this was struck out -
almost certainly at the time of writing. 'Proudfoots' was first written
'Proudfeet', as earlier in the chapter, but as the next sentence shows it
was changed in the act of writing.