The Hobbit

had stopped, for, if you remember, Gandalf had told them
     to come in pairs every five minutes.
    “Hullo!” said Beorn. “You came pretty quick—where were you hiding? Come on my jack-in-the-boxes!”
    “Nori at your service, Ori at...” they began; but Beorn interrupted them.
    “Thank you! When I want your help I will ask for it. Sit down, and let’s get on with this tale, or it will be supper-time
     before it is ended.”
    “As soon as we were asleep,” went on Gandalf, “a crack at the back of the cave opened; goblins came out and grabbed the hobbit and the dwarves and our troop of ponies—”
    “Troop of ponies? What were you—a travelling circus? Or were you carrying lots of goods? Or do you always call six a troop?”
    “O no! As a matter of fact there were more than six ponies, for there were more than six of us—and well, here are two more!”
     Just at that moment Balin and Dwalin appeared and bowed so low that their beards swept the stone floor. The big man was frowning
     at first, but they did their best to be frightfully polite, and kept on nodding and bending and bowing and waving their hoods
     before their knees (in proper dwarf-fashion), till he stopped frowning and burst into a chuckling laugh: they looked so comical.
    “Troop, was right,” he said. “A fine comic one. Come in my merry men, and what are
your
names? I don’t want your service just now, only your names; and then sit down and stop wagging!”
    “Balin and Dwalin,” they said not daring to be offended, and sat flop on the floor looking rather surprised.
    “Now go on again!” said Beorn to the wizard. “Where was I? O yes—I was
not
grabbed. I killed a goblin or two with a flash—”
    “Good!” growled Beorn. “It is some good being a wizard, then.”
    “—and slipped inside the crack before it closed. I followed down into the main hall, which was crowded with goblins. The Great
     Goblin was there with thirty or forty armed guards. I thought to myself ‘even if they were not all chained together, what
     can a dozen do against so many?”’
    “A dozen! That’s the first time I’ve heard eight called a dozen. Or have you still got some more jacks that haven’t yet come
     out of their boxes?”
    “Well, yes, there seem to be a couple more here now—Fili and Kili, I believe,” said Gandalf, as these two now appeared and
     stood smiling and bowing.
    “That’s enough!” said Beorn. “Sit down and be quiet! Now go on, Gandalf!”
    So Gandalf went on with the tale, until he came to the fight in the dark, the discovery of the lower gate, and their horror
     when they found that Mr. Baggins had been mislaid. “We counted ourselves and found that there was no hobbit. There were only
     fourteen of us left!”
    “Fourteen! That’s the first time I’ve heard one from ten leave fourteen. You mean nine, or else you haven’t told me yet all
     the names of your party.”
    “Well, of course you haven’t seen Oin and Gloin yet. And, bless me! here they are. I hope you will forgive them for bothering
     you.”
    “O let ’em all come! Hurry up! Come along, you two, and sit down! But look here, Gandalf, even now we have only got yourself
     and ten dwarves and the hobbit that was lost. That only makes eleven (plus one mislaid) and not fourteen, unless wizards count
     differently to other people. But now please get on with the tale.” Beorn did not show it more than he could help, but really
     he had begun to get very interested. You see, in the old days he had known the very part of the mountains that Gandalf was
     describing. He nodded and he growled, when he heard of the hobbit’s reappearance and of their scramble down the stone-slide
     and of the wolf-ring in the woods.
    When Gandalf came to their climbing into trees with the wolves all underneath, he got up and strode about and muttered: “I
     wish I had been there! I would have given them more than fireworks!”
    “Well,” said Gandalf very glad to see that his tale was making a good impression, “I did the best I could. There we were with
     the wolves going mad underneath us and the forest beginning to blaze in places, when the goblins came down from the hills
     and discovered us. They yelled with delight and sang songs making fun of us.
Fifteen birds in five fir-trees ...
”
    “Good heavens!” growled Beorn. “Don’t pretend that goblins can’t count. They can. Twelve isn’t fifteen and they know it.”
    “And so do I. There were Bifur and