The Elves had been good for Frodo, Sam decided.  It wasn't just the light in his eyes, nor the way his shoulders lifted up when he laughed.  He'd been smoothed over, like sanded wood, and there was nothing rough or broken left in him.  It was unsettling at times, the way he didn't mind waking up at dawn, didn't grumble if he'd forgotten something on the way out of his home--their home--that was unsettling, too--and wrote poetry (in Elvish!) fluidly and easily, with nary a word about "that confounded writer's block."  At times Sam almost missed the old Frodo, until he remembered what the old Frodo had become.

But in a way this new Frodo, old and beautiful and wise as any elf, was much more like the old Frodo, the old old Frodo, the one that had laughed and danced and rambled through the Shire before anyone had heard of that accursed Ring, than the one Sam had bade farewell to so many years ago.  For if he had been smoothed over, in one area he was still sharp as a whip, and that was his sense of humour.  And really, as Sam thought it over, this was the root of the matter, for if Frodo now joked as much as he had before the Quest, his subject matter all too often concerned things that had happened on the Quest, things that afterwards he might have had a quick word or two on the subject, but that Sam could still see haunted him.  Now it was as if none of that were there, and Frodo were so eager to impress on Sam that he had healed that he kept on bringing it up.  And whereas before when class had mattered he had at least had the decency to keep Sam's feelings in mind, now he ruthlessly brought it up, over and over again--how much he was beholden to Sam for his life.

It made Sam uncomfortable.  And he knew that Frodo knew that it annoyed him, and he knew even more that this was precisely why he was doing it and that was really how Sam knew that the Elves had been good for Frodo.

But what had been good for Frodo was making Sam turn pink, it seemed, at least once an hour, and Sam thought that he had lived long enough to have no shame.

At last he could not bear it any longer and decided to confront the great shining being that used to be Gandalf about the matter.  He had a feeling that he did not know all that was to be known about it and in such cases it was best to get a second opinion.

"You are right, of course," said he, after Sam had explained the difficulty.  "By which I mean, among other things, that you are right in admitting that your knowledge is imperfect.  So I will try to explain what I see as going on.  Simply put, Frodo thinks that he has forgotten how to be a hobbit, living with elves so long, and perhaps he has also forgotten that some of your own memories of Shadow have scarred over, but not healed.  And, really, he wishes to do you honour, and so will he perhaps not be the only one embarrassed by others continually singing his exploits.  He has lived here long alone, and has had to learn to accept earned praise with grace.  I should think you have too."

Sam bowed his head at this.  "Yes," he said, "but coming from him it still seems wrong."

"You cannot hide behind his own achievements anymore?"

Sam turned red.  "Maybe."

"Do not think that Eressëa can offer no healing to you just because you did not suffer as Frodo did.  I believe that given time you will find him a little easier to understand."

"I hope so."

"I can speak to him if you wish."

"That's quite all right.  It may have been a while, but I think I can handle him myself."

A/N:  For those of you wondering where Sam's accent up and ran off to, I'm imagining that at this point in his life he has dealt with enough hobbits of all classes to be able to adapt his speech to the occasion.  At any rate I usually attempt to characterize his speech/internal monologuing by overall word choice and not obvious dialect indicators.  Please let me know if you think it worked.