[Child of the 7th Age]

Please explain why and how exactly you deigned to set fire to my Inn?

At the sound of Aman's booming voice, Hawthorne took two steps back wishing that she was anywhere except standing here in front of the Innkeeper. Mistress Aman had even threatened to send a messanger back to Uncle Merry. Meriadoc's exploits as a teener and tweener were renowned throughout all of Buckland. He had done his share of mushroom filching, carousing with other young hobbits, and pulling silly tricks on all the Brandybuck clan. But, in all these tales, Hawthorne had never heard of Merry purposely setting fire to anything. If such an account reached her uncle's ear, Hawthorne thought she would die of shame.

Drawing herself up to her full three feet, Hawthorne began to explain things as clearly as she could. She thought it might help if she included all the details, "No, Mistress Aman. You don't understand. I didn't try to set the Inn on fire. It kind of happened all by itself."

"You see," Hawthorne noted, "I thought I'd make some bacon and eggs and some lovely biscuits. I wanted to show Ruby and Buttercup that I could whip up a fine breakfast even without them. The bacon and eggs were sizzling away, but someone forgot to start the peat fire in the oven so I couldn't bake my biscuits. And no self respecting hobbit would eat breakfast without a pile of nice, fluffy biscuits! I'd found a good recipe from the day before and I wanted to try it out. Actually there were two good recipes, but I looked them over and picked out the one that seemed to be most tasty. It seemed like a good idea at the time. So I started to fry up a batch of breakfast biscuits in a pot of hot oil. Then I turned my back for just a minute --- well, it may have been five minutes or so -- to step out to the gardens and pick some blossoms to decorate the breakfast tables. I had to decide whether the roses or pansies worked best. But, before I could decide, when I looked back at the kitchen, there were huge clouds of grey smoke swirling out the door. So please, Mistress Aman, protect me from the Shirriff. He wants to send me to jail."


Hawthorne gave a sharp glance over at Shirriff Fredgar, then stopped for a minute to catch her breath while Aman stared down incredulously at her. The young lass was about to be arrested and she was going on and on about biscuits and blossoms. Aman let out a terrible howl as Hawthorne opened her mouth to continue speaking, "Stop, stop! No more! You're saying this was all an accident, then? And that you only meant to cook breakfast? How do I know this is true?"

"That's right....," Hawthorne hung her head. "What I did was incredibly stupid and I deserve to be punished. If you really think I have to go to jail, I will. But I hope there's some other way I can serve my time. I know now I should never have tried to cook without someone showing me first. But I never intended to hurt the Inn. I only wanted Ruby and Buttercup to like me."

Aman snapped back, "Then why didn't you put the fire out, or get someone to help?"

"I tried to. I threw the water on the pan, but it only made the flames grow higher. I guess water wasn't the right thing to use...." Hawthorne made a long face. "And I did call for help. It was a dwarf, someone I'd never seen before. I told him to tell everyone."

Hawthorne quickly glanced around the courtyard and spied a dwarf standing in the food line. Hawthorne's face brightened, "There he is. That fellow. Talk to him. He knows I tried to get help and that the fire was a mistake......"

"Bring the dwarf over here," the Innkeeper commanded.