I protest, added my uncle Toby, looking up, as he protested
it, towards the top of the ceiling--That was I her brother, Trim, a
thousand fold, she could not make more constant or more tender enquiries
after my sufferings--though now no more.

The corporal made no reply to my uncle Toby's protestation, but by a
short cough--he dipp'd the pen a second time into the inkhorn; and my
uncle Toby, pointing with the end of his pipe as close to the top of the
sheet at the left hand corner of it, as he could get it--the corporal
wrote down the word HUMANITY...thus.

Prithee, corporal, said my uncle Toby, as soon as Trim had done it--how
often does Mrs. Bridget enquire after the wound on the cap of thy knee,
which thou received'st at the battle of Landen?

She never, an' please your honour, enquires after it at all.

That, corporal, said my uncle Toby, with all the triumph the goodness of
his nature would permit--That shews the difference in the character
of the mistress and maid--had the fortune of war allotted the same
mischance to me, Mrs. Wadman would have enquired into every circumstance
relating to it a hundred times--She would have enquired, an' please your
honour, ten times as often about your honour's groin--The pain, Trim, is
equally excruciating,--and Compassion has as much to do with the one as
the other--

--God bless your honour! cried the corporal--what has a woman's
compassion to do with a wound upon the cap of a man's knee? had your
honour's been shot into ten thousand splinters at the affair of Landen,
Mrs. Wadman would have troubled her head as little about it as Bridget;
because, added the corporal, lowering his voice, and speaking very
distinctly, as he assigned his reason--

'The knee is such a distance from the main body--whereas the groin, your
honour knows, is upon the very curtain of the place.'

My uncle Toby gave a long whistle--but in a note which could scarce be
heard across the table.

The corporal had advanced too far to retire--in three words he told the
rest--

My uncle Toby laid down his pipe as gently upon the fender, as if it had
been spun from the unravellings of a spider's web--

--Let us go to my brother Shandy's, said he.

Chapter 4.XCI.

There will be just time, whilst my uncle Toby and Trim are walking to
my father's, to inform you that Mrs. Wadman had, some moons before this,
made a confident of my mother; and that Mrs. Bridget, who had the burden
of her own, as well a