Uncle Jack shook his head.
"No, my boy—I must go to town with your father. You don't understand these things. I shall see the booksellers for him. I know how these gentlemen are to be dealt with. I shall prepare the literary circles for the appearance of the book. In short, it is a sacrifice of interest I know. My Journal will suffer. But friendship and my country's good before all things!"
"Dear Jack!" said my mother affectionately.
"I cannot suffer it," cried my father. "You are making a good income. You are doing well where you are; and as to seeing the booksellers—why, when the work is ready, you can come to town for a week, and settle that affair."
"Poor dear Austin," said Uncle Jack, with an air of superiority and compassion. "A week! Sir, the advent of a book that is to succeed requires the preparation of months. Pshaw! I am no genius, bu I am a practical man. I know what's what. Leave me alone."
But my father continued obstinate and Uncle Jack at last ceased to urge the matter. The journey to fame and London was now settled; but my father would not hear of my staying behind.
No; Pisistratus must needs go also to town and see the world; the duck would take care of itself.
CHAPTER XII.
We had taken the precaution to send, the day before, to secure our due complement of places—four in all (including one for Mrs Primmins)—in, or upon, the fast family coach called the Sun, which had lately been set up for the special convenience of the neighbourhood.
This luminary, rising in a town about seven miles distant from us, described at first a very erratic orbit amidst the contiguous villages before it finally struck into the high-road of enlightenment, and thence performed its journey, in the full eyes of man, at the majestic pace of six miles and a half an hour. My father, with his pockets full of books, and a quarto of "Gebelin on the Primitive World" for light reading under his arm; my mother, with a little basket, containing sandwiches and biscuits of her own baking; Mrs Primmins, with a new umbrella, purchased for the occasion, and a bird-cage containing a canary, endeared to her not more by song than age, and a severe pip through which she had successfully nursed it—and I myself, waited at the gates to welcome the celestial visitor. The gardener, with a wheel-barrow full of boxes and portmanteaus, stood a little in the van; and the footman, who was to follow when lodgings had been found, had gone to a rising eminence to watch the dawning of the expected planet, and apprise us of its approach by the concerted signal of a handkerchief fixed to a stick.