close to the side of the sentry-box, my uncle Toby, in the simplicity of his soul, would lay his hand flat upon it, in order to go on with his explanation; and Mrs. Wadman, by a manoeuvre as quick as thought, would as certainly place her's close beside it; this at once opened a communication, large enough for any sentiment to pass or re-pass, which a person skill'd in the elementary and practical part of love-making, has occasion for—
By bringing up her forefinger parallel (as before) to my uncle Toby's—it unavoidably brought the thumb into action—and the forefinger and thumb being once engaged, as naturally brought in the whole hand. Thine, dear uncle Toby! was never now in 'ts right place—Mrs. Wadman had it ever to take up, or, with the gentlest pushings, protrusions, and equivocal compressions, that a hand to be removed is capable of receiving—to get it press'd a hair breadth of one side out of her way.
Whilst this was doing, how could she forget to make him sensible, that it was her leg (and no one's else) at the bottom of the sentry-box, which slightly press'd against the calf of his—So that my uncle Toby being thus attack'd and sore push'd on both his wings—was it a wonder, if now and then, it put his centre into disorder?—
—The duce take it! said my uncle Toby.
Chapter 4.XLI.
These attacks of Mrs. Wadman, you will readily conceive to be of different kinds; varying from each other, like the attacks which history is full of, and from the same reasons. A general looker-on would scarce allow them to be attacks at all—or if he did, would confound them all together—but I write not to them: it will be time enough to be a little more exact in my descriptions of them, as I come up to them, which will not be for some chapters; having nothing more to add in this, but that in a bundle of original papers and drawings which my father took care to roll up by themselves, there is a plan of Bouchain in perfect preservation (and shall be kept so, whilst I have power to preserve any thing), upon the lower corner of which, on the right hand side, there is still remaining the marks of a snuffy finger and thumb, which there is all the reason in the world to imagine, were Mrs. Wadman's; for the opposite side of the margin, which I suppose to have been my uncle Toby's, is absolutely clean: This seems an authenticated record of one of these attacks; for there are vestigia of the two punctures partly grown up, but still visible on the opposite corner of the map, which are unquestionably the very holes, through which it has been pricked up in the sentry-box—
By all that is priestly! I value this precious relick, with its stigmata and pricks, more than all the relicks of the Romish church—always excepting, when I am writing upon these matters, the pricks which entered the flesh of St. Radagunda in the desert, which in your road from Fesse to Cluny, the nuns of that name will shew you for love.
Chapter 4.XLII.
I think, an' please your honour, quoth Trim, the fortifications are quite destroyed—and the bason is upon a level with the mole—I think so too; replied my uncle Toby with a sigh half suppress'd—but step into the parlour, Trim, for the stipulation—it lies upon the table.
It has lain there these six weeks, replied the corporal, till this very morning that the old woman kindled the fire with it—
—Then, said my uncle Toby, there is no further occasion for our services. The more, an' please your honour, the pity, said the corporal; in uttering which he cast his spade into the wheel-barrow, which was beside him, with an air the most expressive of disconsolation that can be imagined, and was heavily turning about to look for his pickax, his pioneer's shovel, his picquets, and other little military stores, in order to carry them off the field—when a heigh-ho! from the sentry-box, which being made of thin slit deal, reverberated the sound more sorrowfully to his ear, forbad him.
—No; said the corporal to himself, I'll do it before his honour rises to-morrow morning; so taking his spade out of the wheel-barrow again, with a little earth in it, as if to level something at the foot of the glacis—but with a real intent to approach nearer to his master, in order to divert him—he loosen'd a sod or two—pared their edges with his spade, and having given them a gentle blow or two with the back of it, he sat himself down close by my uncle Toby's feet and began as follows.
