The day was fine and full of bright sunshine and puffy white clouds. Rose and Elanor giggled and laughed as they rode in the Bag End pony cart towards Hobbiton. They were on their way to pick up the Gardner children from Aunt Marigold and Uncle Tom’s house now that Uncle Frodo was better. The two-pony cart was necessary to carry back all the children, their clothes, and for whatever bales of hay were left over for the cows. The wagon creaked and popped as its wheels bounced over ruts and rocks in the well-traveled Bywater-Hobbiton section of the great East Road. The two ponies nickered to themselves at their good fortune of not having much to haul on this section of the road. Mother and daughter also relished the easy, quiet time to themselves; talking as if they hadn’t a care in the world.

The tiny brass bells tied to the ponies’ harnesses made sweet counterpoint to the mother/daughter laughter. Elanor kept asking Rose to elaborate about the first time Rose and Sam met. The story about the shy little sandy-brown haired boy tagging along with his father to consult with Rose’s own father over their potato crop became more and more detailed as the minutes ticked by.

As the wagon approached the turnoff in the road leading to Cooperton farm, a young lad wearing straw-colored breeches and a homespun work shirt appeared at the front door and sauntered up to the white picket gate. He was a handsome boy of about nineteen, with curly brown hair and dancing hazel eyes, and a smile which would melt icicles in the middle of winter.

“Morning Mrs. Gamgee,” he called out, waving politely. “Hello Miss Elanor.”

“Marmaduke Cooperton, is that you?” Rose called out.

“Yes mam,” he smiled.

“Why, you’ve grown at least an inch since last time I saw you,” Rose smiled back. Rose had to elbow her daughter to speak before the silence became unacceptable. “Say good morning, Elanor,” Rose sternly whispered.

“Uh…Good morning Marmaduke,” Elanor managed to stammer. Young Marmaduke’s easy smile turned into a slight grin. He winked at Elanor, then sauntered back down the lane to go about his business.

Rose turned to find her daughter blushing bright red from ear tip to ear tip. Rose shook her head and geed up the ponies to increase their pace slightly. The little bells jingled merrily as they rounded the bend in the road. The quiet blue pool of the Water could be seen, as well as its associated mill and the small gaggle of buildings surrounding the bridge. As soon as they were safely out of earshot Rose turned to her firstborn. “Well? Cat got your tongue?”

Elanor only blushed harder and looked away.

“All right, young lady. Out with it. What’s between you and Marmaduke Cooperton?”

Elanor sighed a tremendous sigh and wrung her hands. Rose almost lost her composure at the melodramatics going on, but managed to stifle her laughter. “Oh, Mother,” Elanor whined. “Oh, Mother…It isn’t what…I mean…Oh, I don’t know what I mean. Um…Oh. Oh, I don’t know.”

Rose looked straight ahead at the placid road to give her daughter a moment to collect herself. From the corner of her eye Rose could see even more hand-wringing. Rose looked sideways at her beautiful, but still terribly young daughter. Elanor had such a fair complexion that any blush could be seen for miles. “So, Elanor. What’s going on between you two?”

Elanor started chewing on her thumbnail – a habit she had picked up from her Uncle Frodo. “Oh, Mom!” Elanor sighed. An uncomfortable silence cloaked the cart like a shadow of a passing cloud.

Rose wouldn’t let the unanswered question lie. She kept glancing at Elanor, who continued to look anywhere except at her mother. She finally gave in.

“We all promised not to tell,” she blurted out.

Rose let that one lie for awhile before answering. “Sweetheart, I’ll not ask you to break a promise,” she said, “but I need to know if you or he or any of your friends have done something which is bothering you now.”

There was another uncomfortable silence as Elanor weighted the potential consequences of her options. She finally sighed and turned to face her mother. “You promise to not tell Daddy or Uncle Fro?”

“That depends upon what you tell me,” Rose said. “But I want you to understand, Elanor, that no matter what you say, I love you. So does Sam-Dad and Uncle Frodo. We all love you and always will. Now, trust me to know what Daddy and Uncle should know and what is to be just between you and me.” Rose moved the reins to one hand and took her daughter’s hand in the other. “Do you trust me, sweetheart?”

Elanor nodded while chewing on her lower lip. She took a deep breath and the words tumbled out helter-skelter.

“Lissie and Briar-Rose and me were at Buttercup Overstock’s birthday party a couple of weeks ago and all the cute boys from Bywater and some from Overhill were there and then Mamaduke and his cousin Folco who’s eighteen came over and we were trying to guess who was the best dancer or the best kisser and then Lissie has the nerve to actually go up to Jackie Hornblower and tells him what we’ve been talking about and then he tells his cousin, Gingo Boffin, and then all the boys know and they come over and offer to show us how to do it proper even though Buttercup says they don’t know either cause they’re only fourteen, and then Belladonna Trotter from Pincup, well, she did it first with Folco, but then she said I was a scared little Miss know-nothing-in-my-blond-head and my parents never let me do anything fun or have any adventures of my own and we all promised to do it if we didn’t tell anyone else and we crossed our fingers and turned around three times and swore on the Old Took’s grave and so…so I…I did it with Marmaduke.”

“Did what exactly, dear?” Rose calmly said, though her heart was racing and her palms sweaty with imagination of the worse.

“I kissed him,” Elanor confessed. “And Mom! He…he said I didn’t know the difference between kissing a boy and kissing a cow and he said he would teach me how to kiss properly and so…Ew! Mom. It was so horrible! He stuck his tongue in my mouth! Oh, there! I’ve said it. Why would he do that? Oh, Mom,” Elanor desperately clutched at her mother’s sleeve. “Will I have a baby because he did that?”

Rose was almost fainting from a combination of relief and suppressed laughter, but managed to keep a straight face. “No, darling. You cannot become pregnant from enjoying an open-mouth kiss with a boy,” Rose said in all seriousness. “I thought you knew how babies are made. I’ve been over that with you.”

Elanor sat on her hands, blushing again and looking into her lap. “I remember. It’s just…Well, Lissie said you could too get a baby if you let a boy put his tongue in you. And, well…I…I couldn’t remember. I feel stupid asking.” She looked up at her mother. “Oh Mom, I’m SO glad you told me because I was SO worried! I wanted to ask you, but we all made that promise, and then Uncle Fro got sick and I sort of forgot about it…” She stopped in mid-sentence. “Oh! You’re not going to tell Uncle Fro or Dad are you? Oh, please, Mom, don’t tell them.”

Rose finally allowed the smile she had been suppressing to surface. “No, dear. This is between you and me. Girl-talk. We won’t tell either of your fathers about this.” Rose calmly turned the ponies so that they took the Northern branch of the road around the Water. “But Elanor, I do want you to understand something. You are only thirteen. That’s far too young to be flirting with nineteen-year-olds. You need to listen to your heart and your head more than to the foolishness of certain friends. Your heart will tell you what is right and what is wrong.”

“How can I know the difference?” Elanor asked.

“Use Sam-Dad and Uncle Frodo as guides for making choices. Ask yourself if what you are about to do would bring shame to them; then follow what your conscious tells you is for the best. Then you’ll never have little secrets to hide from your family. Those little secrets kept inside eventually become known anyway.”

“Does that include the secret about Uncle Fro which Dad asked me to keep?” Elanor asked.

‘Ah. Caught in Sam’s lie,’ Rose thought. ‘Trust a teenager to make you evaluate your own actions and beliefs.’

“Elanor, your father was wrong to ask you to do that,” Rose said. “But I’ll ask you to continue to keep that secret until Sam-Dad and I can talk to Uncle Frodo about it. Will you do that for me?”

“Yes, Mom.”