"Sir, sermons are mere drugs," said the stranger. "The trade is so vastly stocked with them that really, unless they come out with the name of Whitefield or Wesley, or some other such great man, as a bishop, or those sort of people, I don't care to touch. However, I will, if you please, take the manuscript with me to town, and send you my opinion of it in a very short time."
When, however, Adams began to describe the nature of his sermons the bookseller drew back, on the ground that the clergy would be certain to cry down such a book.
An accident prevented Mr. Adams from pursuing a market for his sermons any further, which he would have done in spite of the advice of Barnabas and the bookseller. This accident was, that those sermons which the parson was travelling to London to publish were left behind; what he had mistaken for them in the saddle-bags were three shirts, which Mrs. Adams, who thought her husband would need shirts rather than sermons on his journey, had carefully provided for him.
Joseph, concerned at the disappointment to his friend, begged him to pursue his journey all the same, and promised he would himself return with the books to him with the utmost expedition.
"No, thank you, child," answered Adams; "it shall not be so. What would it avail me to tarry in the great city unless I had my discourses with me? No; as this accident has happened, I am resolved to return back to my cure, together with you; which, indeed, my inclination sufficiently leads me to."
Mr. Adams, whose credit was good wherever he was known, having borrowed a guinea from a servant belonging to a coach-and-six, who had been formerly one of his parishioners, discharged the bill for Joseph and himself, and the two travellers set off.
III.--More Adventures
Adams and Joseph Andrews being for a time separated on the road, through the former's absent-mindedness, it fell to the lot of the parson to hasten to the assistance of a damsel who in a lonely place was being attacked by some ruffian.
Adams was as strong as he was brave, and having rescued the maiden, took her under his protection. It was too dark for either to identify the other, but on Mr. Adams ejaculating the name of Joseph Andrews, for whose safety he was anxious, his companion recognised his voice, and the parson was quickly informed that it was Fanny who was by his side.
The fact was the poor girl had heard of Joseph's misfortune from the servants of a coach which had stopped at the inn while the poor youth was confined to his bed; and she had that instant abandoned the cow she was milking, and taking with her a little bundle of clothes under her arm, and all the money she was worth in her own purse, immediately set forward in pursuit of one whom she loved with inexpressible violence, though with the purest and most delicate passion.