...Also, it's amusing to go from this to the opening of LOTR in which Bilbo, arguing with Gandalf over the Ring and Bilbo's fake narrative of how he got it (which is itself a metatextual allusion to Tolkien's revisions of The Hobbit), says "I'm not a thief" and Gandalf says "I never called you one", even though Gandalf spent the entire previous book extolling Bilbo's skill as a burglar before Bilbo has even gotten up to any actual burglary.