[Bêthberry]

Ruthven gingerishly rose to her feet, carefully feeling all her limbs and sides to make sure her aged bones could take this kind of horseplay. She watched Oin and Finky race around her cart. They seemed to have forgotten her and so for the time being she could simply catch her breath and wipe some of the mud from her. Truth be told, she hadn't had so much fun in years. Yet it wasn't like she would let on to the dwarves.

"You harmed my dignity!" shouted Oin, barely missing one of the cart's handles as he tried to catch Finky.

"You harmed an old lady!" retorted Finky, running around the front wheel and nearly catching his foot in the spokes..

"You'll pay, you miserable dwarf!!" accused Oin.

"Make me you descendant of rats scurrying under mountains."

"By the Beard of Durin I'll make you eat this mud," swore Oin.

"Tastes better than your words!"

The faster they ran around the cart, the more the mud flew and the dirtier the two dwarves became. Their hair and faces, beards and clothes were covered with mud, head to foot and back again.

Ruthven began to laugh, slowly at first and then faster and more loudly, but with good humour. Her voice rang out and slowly penetrated the thick skulls of the two dwarves. They stopped. They looked at each other. They looked at her.

Now, Oin was a decent fellow inspite of his grumbling. And Finky really did care for Oin. And they were getting tired of all this running and falling.

"I beg your pardon?" commented Oin, attempting to regain some of his dignity.

"What's this?" asked Finky, wanting to appear the peace-maker.

"You're dignity's digging yourselves down in the mud. Keep it up and the two of ye will be turned into stone yourselves prematurely. I won't know ye from the earth you're pounding."

The two looked at her under muddy eyebrows. They looked at each other. All three began to hoot and hollar.

"We are a right mess," observed Oin.

"We have taken our beauty baths," sniffed Finky.

"Methinks we'd best move on and clean ourselves before this cakes on," replied Ruthven, beginning to feel the chill of the spring mud move into her bones.

"Come, Finky," said Oin. "Let's get this cart out of the mud and head back to that Inn. We'll never get on our way this way."

"Right you are," replied Finky.

And so the two dwarves helped Ruthven roll her cat back to her small leanto behind one of the stores, where she cleaned herself of the muck. And the two dwarves moved on to the Horse, where they carefully treaded into their room, tossing Aylwen some coin for the mud they brought in, and bathed as is the wont and way of dwarves. Which is to say, in mighty pails of steaming hot water.

And so Ruthven found that she needed a way not with words but with laughter to bring the two to their senses. And so they all agreed to meet again at the Horse once they were cleaned and dried and brought back to jolly good humour. And that was how they found themselves listening to the battle of the songs between Hearpwine and Liornung and attended to the challenge of songs between Hearpwine and Bethberry. All in all, it had been a good day to be a dwarf.