meantime we may depend upon it, Trim , for our comfort, said my uncle Toby , that God Almighty is so good and just a governor of the world, that if we have but done our duties in it,—it will never be enquired into, whether we have done them in a red coat or a black one:⸺I hope not, said the corporal⸺But go on, Trim , said my uncle Toby , with thy story.
When I went up, continued the corporal, into the lieutenant’s room, which I did not do till the expiration of the ten minutes,—he was lying in his bed with his head raised upon his hand, with his elbow upon the pillow, and a clean white cambrick handkerchief beside it:⸺The youth was just stooping down to take up the cushion, upon which I supposed he had been kneeling,—the book was laid upon the bed,—and, as he rose, in taking up the cushion with one hand, he reached out his other to take it away at the same time.⸺Let it remain there, my dear, said the lieutenant.
He did not offer to speak to me, till I had walked up close to his bedside:—If you are captain Shandy’s servant, said he, you must present my thanks to your master, with my little boy’s thanks along with them, for his courtesy to me;—if he was of Leven’s —said the lieutenant.—I told him your honour was—Then, said he, I served three campaigns with him in Flanders , and remember him,—but ’tis most likely, as I had not the honour of any acquaintance with him, that he knows nothing of me.⸺You will tell him, however, that the person his good-nature has laid under obligations to him, is one Le Fever , a lieutenant in Angus’s ⸺but he knows me not,—said he, a second time, musing;⸺possibly he may my story—added he—pray tell the captain, I was the ensign at Breda , whose wife was most unfortunately killed with a musket-shot, as she lay in my arms in my tent.⸺I remember the story, an’t please your honour, said I, very well.⸺Do you so? said he, wiping his eyes with his handkerchief,—then well may I.—In saying this, he drew a little ring out of his bosom, which seemed tied with a black