[doug*platypus]

Walking out to the hallway, Biffo took up his tall staff, slung his coat over his shoulder, and plopped his felt hat on his head.

"Well, that's me packed!" he grinned at Olo.

"Oh, no it's not!" a female voice scolded from further down the passage. It was Maggie, Olo's wife.

"Biffo Proudfoot, you are not going off into the back of beyond without so much as a woolly blanket! What would your mother say?"

"I'm fine, aunty," the cornered hobbit replied. "Don't fuss so much!"

"You need a pillow, a cooking pot, a ladle, a bowl, not to mention a spare handkerchief!" Maggie began counting off items on her fingers.

"Yes, all well and good, Aunty, but Frogmorton's a mighty long way from here. Roughing it a little is hardly going to kill me, especially if we're at an Inn, now is it?"

"Now, now, Maggie," said Olo, stepping in between his nephew and his now fuming wife. "I'll take some things along for the lad. You go on ahead, Biffo. I have one or two things to take care of."

Biffo thanked his uncle curtly, nodded a rather sarcastic farewell to his wife, and strode off out the door. Once outside, he felt much less shut in, in more ways than one. Though the morning had been chill, it was now mid afternoon on a lovely day in early spring, and Biffo ambled along with Primrose just in sight a few hundred yards ahead of him.

After a few twists and turns, the hobbit came to the lane in Hobbiton where the Tussocks lived. Primrose went inside a hole near the end of the road, and Biffo slowed his pace. He soon came to a fenced yard with a lovely cobbled pathway leading up to Primrose's door. Biffo arrived as Primrose was hitching a pony up to the family cart.

"Good day for it!" Biffo remarked, and leaned against the fence to wait for the rest of the group.