This story takes place in the fall of SR 1441. Samwise is 61, Rose is 57, and their children range in age from twenty-year-old Elanor to baby Robin, less than a year old.

Sam is not supposed to be home yet. He should still be at the banquet, proposing toasts to the new bride and groom (two hobbits he has met only twice, but the mother of the groom--who he has met four times--insisted that the Mayor be present at the wedding) and eating and eating and eating. But it started in to rain, and the wedding party all fled from under the flimsy tents and crowded into the Boffin's big house, and in the noisy, hot, odorous crush, the Mayor looked around and knew he'd not be missed, and he snuck away.

Now as the rainclouds hasten the autumn night, he sneaks in the front door of Bag End--seldom used these days--and down the hall, dodging past the children's rooms and the kitchen, both lively with high, piping voices. He closes himself into the bathing room and prepares a perfect bath: steaming water, his favorite scent (a secret and somewhat embarrassing habit he picked up from clandestine experiments with Mr. Frodo's oils, long ago when he and Rosie and Elanor first moved up the hill), fresh, fluffy towel near to hand.

Just before he disrobes, Sam feels a guilty pang. He cracks open the door (not wanting to waste any of the precious steam) and calls down the corridor: "I'm home, Rose love! Just going to take a quick bath, I'm all muddied up!" He closes the door quickly, and a matter of moments later eases himself into the cauldron of bliss.

Outside he can distantly hear his family: singing, voices, the crash of something hitting the floor (or wall or ceiling or some fixed piece of furniture), the wailing of someone--Ruby, he thinks it is. Samwise Gamgee is neck-deep in the fragrant water, eyes closed, lips curved in a beatific smile, when the door opens with a crash. WHAM! Sam begins to leap out of the tub, then sinks back when he sees it is only young Bilbo. The chubby lad ignores his father and crosses to the wash basin, where he climbs upon the footstool and pulls his wooden tooth-brush from one of the three holders to scrub his teeth.

"Could you not wait until I finish my bath?" asks Sam irascibly.

Bilbo industriously grinds away at his pearly white teeth, but speaks anyhow, and Sam manages to decipher it: "Mum sent me in to get me away from Ruby because I made her cry."

Sam watches the sturdy child, and times his next question so that he'll get a clear reply: "What did you do to Ruby?"

Bilbo wipes his face (on Sam's towel, and then drops it onto the floor where the water splashed when Sam leapt up). "We were fighting and she got hurt."

"What were you fighting about?"

Bilbo carefully places his tooth-brush back where it belongs and then sits on the stool, observing his father and swining his round legs. "We weren't fighting about anything, Papa." That this should be obvious is clear from the lad's tone. "We were just fighting. I was the king and she was a troll."

"Well, you must be careful with your younger sister, Bilbo."

"I know, she's littler than me."

"Yes, she is."

"But Papa, ever since I ate all that fish stew--" a meal which they ate, Sam dimly recalls, approximately a month ago-- "I've gotten so big." He stands and trots out the door.

"Close the door!" calls Samwise, to no avail.

A moment later Daisy enters, trailed by three-year-old Ruby, who shows signs of her recent tears and is still sniffing pathetically.

"Girls, can it not wait?" Sam says with exasperation.

Ruby's face begins to collapse and Sam sits up in the tub. "ROSE!" he calls thunderously.

An instant later he realizes that this may have been a tactical mistake, as his wife places herself squarely in the doorway, hands on hips. He must say something, but her forbidding face claps a stopper over the tirade he had intended. "Ah, um, Rose," he stammers. "Yes, Samwise?" she says, and he knows he is in trouble, but plunges on. "Can the children not wait until after my bath to brush their teeth?" he says with a winning (he hopes) smile.

She steps into the room and Sam slides down slightly in the water. "Why, no, Samwise, they cannot." With one hand she thrusts Daisy up to the washbasin, then leans to pick up Ruby, whose lips are trembling. "If you should happen to come home early we are all delighted to have you here," she says. "But if you should also happen," she plants her foot on his towel, "to choose to take your bath at just the time," she scoots it round, sopping up the water thoroughly, "when the children are getting ready for their beds," Sam slides down in the water slightly, so it is up to his collarbone, "and after a day when I am wondering how in the world," now the water is to his chin, "any one of them will live to see their next birthday," Ruby opens her mouth to let out a wail, and Rose raises her voice to speak on over it without pause, "then I am afraid that you shall just have to live with the consequences of your choice." She pulls Daisy from the basin, plucking the tooth-brush from her hand, and pushes her out the door while setting Ruby firmly down atop the footstool, then shoots Sam (who is now barely visible over the surface of the water) a withering look and strides out the door after Daisy.

Ruby weeps as she brushes her teeth, a long, quavering whinging that goes on as she scrubs, as she spits, as she dries her face and hands, and then follows her little form out the door and fades down the corridor.

Samwise Gamgee lies low in the water until Primrose, Hamfast, Goldilocks, Pippin, Merry, and Rose have all had their turn at the basin. His water grows cool, then cold, but he does not stir until he has ascertained, through careful listening to the conversations down the hall (through the still-gaping door), that no-one else will be coming in.

The very next morning, Sam brings Rose a beautiful bouquet at breakfast, a breakfast which he cooks for the entire family. Then he takes her along to the ribbon-cutting ceremony he must attend. It is that night that he sits down and writes to King Elessar, to ask whether it would be well if the Mayor, his wife, and their eldest daughter Elanor might journey to Minas Tirith for a short visit in the spring of the next year (1442, by Shire Reckoning).

The next February, he tells his Rosie of their upcoming journey. She is thrilled, and it is no coincidence that their short visit to Gondor is lengthened by the birth of the Gamgee's thirteenth (and last) child, nine months later. As Sam looks at the squalling infant in his arms, he sighs. He knows that he will suffer through many more stolen baths in the years to come. But he also knows, seeing the perfect button nose and delicate pointed ears of this little hobbit lad, that he will suffer them in silence.