this hand towards the town for the scarp, and on the right hand towards the campaign for the counterscarp.”—­“Very right, Trim,” quoth my Uncle Toby.—­“And when I had sloped them to your mind, an’ please your honour, I would face the glacis, as the finest fortifications are done in Flanders, with sods, and as your honour knows they should be, and I would make the walls and parapets with sods too.”—­“The best engineers call them gazons, Trim,” said my Uncle Toby.

“Your honour understands these matters,” replied corporal Trim, “better than any officer in His Majesty’s service; but would your honour please but let us go into the country, I would work under your honour’s directions like a horse, and make fortifications for you something like a Tansy with all their batteries, saps, ditches, and pallisadoes, that it should be worth all the world to ride twenty miles to go and see it.”

My Uncle Toby blushed as red as scarlet as Trim went on, but it was not a blush of guilt, of modesty, or of anger—­it was a blush of joy; he was fired with Corporal Trim’s project and description.  “Trim,” said my Uncle Toby, “say no more; but go down, Trim, this moment, my lad, and bring up my supper this instant.”

Trim ran down and brought up his master’s supper, to no purpose.  Trim’s plan of operation ran so in my Uncle Toby’s head, he could not taste it.  “Trim,” quoth my Uncle Toby, “get me to bed.”  ’Twas all one.  Corporal Trim’s description had fired his imagination.  My Uncle Toby could not shut his eyes.  The more he considered it, the more bewitching the scene appeared to him; so that two full hours before daylight he had come to a final determination, and had concerted the whole plan of his and Corporal Trim’s decampment.

My Uncle Toby had a neat little country house of his own in the village where my father’s estate lay at Shandy.  Behind this house was a kitchen garden of about half an acre; and at the bottom of the garden, and cut off from it by a tall yew hedge, was a bowling-green, containing just about as much ground as Corporal Trim wished for.  So that as Trim uttered the words, “a rood and a half of ground, to do what they would with,” this identical bowling-green instantly presented itself upon the retina of my Uncle Toby’s fancy.

Never did lover post down to a beloved mistress with more heat and expectation than my Uncle Toby did to enjoy this self-same thing in private.

VI

“Then reach my breeches off the chair,” said my father to Susanah.—­“There’s not a moment’s time to dress you, sir,” cried Susanah; “bless me, sir, the child’s in a fit.  Mr. Yorick’s curate’s in the dressing room with the child upon his arm, waiting for the name; and my mistress bid me run as fast as I could to know, as Captain Shandy is the godfather, whether it should not be called after him.”

“Were one sure,” said my father to himself, scratching his eyebrow, “that the child was expiring, one might as well compliment my brother Toby as not, and ’twould be a pity in such a case to throw away so great a name as Trismegistus upon him.  But he may recover.”