ay
make no uninteresting under-plot in the epitasis and working-up of this
drama.--At present the scene must drop,--and change for the parlour
fire-side.

Chapter 1.XXXI.

--What can they be doing? brother, said my father.--I think, replied
my uncle Toby,--taking, as I told you, his pipe from his mouth, and
striking the ashes out of it as he began his sentence;--I think, replied
he,--it would not be amiss, brother, if we rung the bell.

Pray, what's all that racket over our heads, Obadiah?--quoth my
father;--my brother and I can scarce hear ourselves speak.

Sir, answered Obadiah, making a bow towards his left shoulder,--my
Mistress is taken very badly.--And where's Susannah running down the
garden there, as if they were going to ravish her?--Sir, she is running
the shortest cut into the town, replied Obadiah, to fetch the old
midwife.--Then saddle a horse, quoth my father, and do you go directly
for Dr. Slop, the man-midwife, with all our services,--and let him know
your mistress is fallen into labour--and that I desire he will return
with you with all speed.

It is very strange, says my father, addressing himself to my uncle Toby,
as Obadiah shut the door,--as there is so expert an operator as Dr. Slop
so near,--that my wife should persist to the very last in this obstinate
humour of hers, in trusting the life of my child, who has had one
misfortune already, to the ignorance of an old woman;--and not only the
life of my child, brother,--but her own life, and with it the lives of
all the children I might, peradventure, have begot out of her hereafter.

Mayhap, brother, replied my uncle Toby, my sister does it to save the
expence:--A pudding's end,--replied my father,--the Doctor must be paid
the same for inaction as action,--if not better,--to keep him in temper.

--Then it can be out of nothing in the whole world, quoth my uncle Toby,
in the simplicity of his heart,--but Modesty.--My sister, I dare say,
added he, does not care to let a man come so near her.... I will not say
whether my uncle Toby had completed the sentence or not;--'tis for his
advantage to suppose he had,--as, I think, he could have added no One
Word which would have improved it.

If, on the contrary, my uncle Toby had not fully arrived at the period's
end--then the world stands indebted to the sudden snapping of my
father's tobacco-pipe for one of the neatest examples of that ornamental
figure in oratory, which Rhetoricians stile the Ap