All this was getting rather intricate for me.  I set it down as I remember it, inaccurately perhaps.  My governess days are pretty far astern now, and my line is common sense rather than literary allusions.  I said something of the sort.

“Common sense?” he repeated.  “Good Lord, ma’am, sense is the most uncommon thing in the world.  I haven’t got it.  I don’t believe your brother has, from what you say.  Bock here has it.  See how he trots along the road, keeps an eye on the scenery, and minds his own business.  I never saw him get into a fight yet.  Wish I could say the same of myself.  I named him after Boccaccio, to remind me to read the ‘Decameron’ some day.”

“Judging by the way you talk,” I said, “you ought to be quite a writer yourself.”

“Talkers never write.  They go on talking.”

There was a considerable silence.  Mifflin relit his pipe and watched the landscape with a shrewd eye.  I held the reins loosely, and Peg ambled along with a steady clop-clop.  Parnassus creaked musically, and the mid-afternoon sun lay rich across the road.  We passed another farm, but I did not suggest stopping as I felt we ought to push on.  Mifflin seemed lost in meditation, and I began to wonder, a little uneasily, how the adventure would turn out.  This quaintly masterful little man was a trifle disconcerting.  Across the next ridge I could see the Greenbriar church spire shining white.

“Do you know this part of the country?” I asked finally.

“Not this exact section.  I’ve been in Port Vigor often, but then I was on the road that runs along the Sound.  I suppose this village ahead is Greenbriar?”

“Yes,” I said.  “It’s about thirteen miles from there to Port Vigor.  How do you expect to get back to Brooklyn?”

“Oh, Brooklyn?” he said vaguely.  “Yes, I’d forgotten about Brooklyn for the minute.  I was thinking of my book.  Why, I guess I’ll take the train from Port Vigor.  The trouble is, you can never get to Brooklyn without going through New York.  It’s symbolic, I suppose.”

Again there was a silence.  Finally he said, “Is there another town between Greenbriar and Port Vigor?”

“Yes, Shelby,” I said.  “About five miles from Greenbriar.”

“That’ll be as far as you’ll get to-night,” he said.  “I’ll see you safe to Shelby, and then make tracks for Port Vigor.  I hope there’s a decent inn at Shelby where you can stop overnight.”

I hoped so, too, but I wasn’t going to let him see that with the waning afternoon my enthusiasm was a little less robust.  I was wondering what Andrew was thinking, and whether Mrs. McNally had left things in good order.  Like most Swedes she had to be watched or she left her work only three quarters done.  And I didn’t depend any too much on her daughter Rosie to do the housework efficiently.  I wondered what kind of meals Andrew would get.  And probably he would go right on wearing his summer underclothes, although I had already reminded him about changing.  Then there were the chickens...