Well, the Rubicon was crossed now, and there was nothing to be done.

To my surprise, little Redbeard had divined my anxiety.  “Now don’t you worry about the Sage,” he said kindly.  “A man that draws his royalties isn’t going to starve.  By the bones of John Murray, his publishers can send him a cook if necessary!  This is a holiday for you, and don’t you forget it.”

And with this cheering sentiment in my mind, we rolled sedately down the hill toward Greenbriar.

I am about as hardy as most folks, I think, but I confess I balked a little at the idea of facing the various people I know in Greenbriar as the owner of a bookvan and the companion of a literary huckster.  Also I recollected that if Andrew should try to trace us it would be as well for me to keep out of sight.  So after telling Mr. Mifflin how I felt about matters I dived into the Parnassus and lay down most comfortably on the bunk.  Bock the terrier joined me, and I rested there in great comfort of mind and body as we ambled down the grade.  The sun shone through the little skylight gilding a tin pan that hung over the cook stove.  Tacked here and there were portraits of authors, and I noticed a faded newspaper cutting pinned up.  The headlines ran:  “Literary Pedlar Lectures on Poetry.”  I read it through.  Apparently the Professor (so I had begun to call him, as the aptness of the nickname stuck in my mind) had given a lecture in Camden, N.J., where he had asserted that Tennyson was a greater poet than Walt Whitman; and the boosters of the Camden poet had enlivened the evening with missiles.  It seems that the chief Whitman disciple in Camden is Mr. Traubel; and Mr. Mifflin had started the rumpus by asserting that Tennyson, too, had “Traubels of his own.”  What an absurd creature the Professor was, I thought, as I lay comfortably lulled by the rolling wheels.

Greenbriar is a straggling little town, built around a large common meadow.  Mifflin’s general plan in towns, he had told me, was to halt Parnassus in front of the principal store or hotel, and when a little throng had gathered he would put up the flaps of the van, distribute his cards, and deliver a harangue on the value of good books.  I lay concealed inside, but I gathered from the sounds that this was what was happening.  We came to a stop; I heard a growing murmur of voices and laughter outside, and then the click of the raised sides of the wagon.  I heard Mifflin’s shrill, slightly nasal voice making facetious remarks as he passed out the cards.  Evidently Bock was quite accustomed to the routine, for though his tail wagged gently when the Professor began to talk, he lay quite peaceably dozing at my feet.