The Hobbit

prisoner in the
     dungeons of the Necromancer.”
    “Whatever were you doing there?” asked Thorin with a shudder, and all the dwarves shivered.
    “Never you mind. I was finding things out, as usual; and a nasty dangerous business it was. Even I, Gandalf, only just escaped.
     I tried to save your father, but it was too late. He was witless and wandering, and had forgotten almost everything except
     the map and the key.”
    “We have long ago paid the goblins of Moria,” said Thorin; “we must give a thought to the Necromancer.”
    “Don’t be absurd! He is an enemy far beyond the powers of all the dwarves put together, if they could all be collected again from the four corners of the world. The one thing your father wished was for his son to read the map
     and use the key. The dragon and the Mountain are more than big enough tasks for you!”
    “Hear, hear!” said Bilbo, and accidentally said it aloud.
    “Hear what?” they all said turning suddenly towards him, and he was so flustered that he answered “Hear what I have got to
     say!”
    “What’s that?” they asked.
    “Well, I should say that you ought to go East and have a look round. After all there is the Side-door, and dragons must sleep
     sometimes, I suppose. If you sit on the door-step long enough, I daresay you will think of something. And well, don’t you
     know, I think we have talked long enough for one night, if you see what I mean. What about bed, and an early start, and all
     that? I will give you a good breakfast before you go.”
    “Before
we
go, I suppose you mean,” said Thorin. “Aren’t you the burglar? And isn’t sitting on the door-step your job, not to speak
     of getting inside the door? But I agree about bed and breakfast. I like six eggs with my ham, when starting on a journey:
     fried not poached, and mind you don’t break ’em.”
    After all the others had ordered their breakfasts without so much as a please (which annoyed Bilbo very much), they all got
     up. The hobbit had to find room for them all, and filled all his spare-rooms and made beds on chairs and sofas, before he
     got them all stowed and went to his own little bed very tired and not altogether happy. One thing he did make his mind up about was not to bother to get up very early and cook everybody else’s wretched breakfast. The Tookishness was wearing
     off, and he was not now quite so sure that he was going on any journey in the morning.
    As he lay in bed he could hear Thorin still humming to himself in the best bedroom next to him:
    Far over the misty mountains cold
    To dungeons deep and caverns old
    We must away, ere break of day,
    To find our long-forgotten gold.
    Bilbo went to sleep with that in his ears, and it gave him very uncomfortable dreams. It was long after the break of day,
     when he woke up.

Chapter
II
ROAST MUTTON
    Up jumped Bilbo, and putting on his dressing-gown went into the dining-room. There he saw nobody, but all the signs of a large
     and hurried breakfast. There was a fearful mess in the room, and piles of unwashed crocks in the kitchen. Nearly every pot
     and pan he possessed seemed to have been used. The washing-up was so dismally real that Bilbo was forced to believe the party
     of the night before had not been part of his bad dreams, as he had rather hoped. Indeed he was really relieved after all to
     think that they had all gone without him, and without bothering to wake him up (“but with never a thank-you” he thought);
     and yet in a way he could not help feeling just a trifle disappointed. The feeling surprised him.
    “Don’t be a fool, Bilbo Baggins!” he said to himself, “thinking of dragons and all that outlandish nonsense at your age!”
     So he put on an apron, lit fires, boiled water, and washed up. Then he had a nice little breakfast in the kitchen before turning
     out the dining-room. By that time the sun was shining; and the front door was open, letting in a warm spring breeze. Bilbo
     began to whistle loudly and to forget about the night before. In fact he was just sitting down to a nice little second breakfast
     in the dining-room by the open window, when in walked Gandalf.
    “My dear fellow,” said he, “whenever
are
you going to come? What about
an early start
?—and here you are having breakfast, or whatever you call it, at half past ten! They left you the message, because they could
     not wait.”
    “What message?” said poor Mr. Baggins all in a fluster.
    “Great Elephants!” said