As Tom , an’ please your honour, had no business at that time with the Moorish girl, he passed on into the room beyond, to talk to the Jew’s widow about love⸺and this pound of sausages; and being, as I have told your honour, an open cheery-hearted lad, with his character wrote in his looks and carriage, he took a chair, and without much apology, but with great civility at the same time, placed it close to her at the table, and sat down.
There is nothing so awkward, as courting a woman, an’ please your honour, whilst she is making sausages⸺So Tom began a discourse upon them; first, gravely,⸺“as how they were made⸺with what meats, herbs, and spices”—Then a little gayly,—as, “With what skins⸺and if they never burst⸺Whether the largest were not the best?”⸺and so on—taking care only as he went along, to season what he had to say upon sausages, rather under than over;⸺that he might have room to act in⸺
It was owing to the neglect of that very precaution, said my uncle Toby , laying his hand upon Trim’s shoulder, that Count De la Motte lost the battle of Wynendale : he pressed too speedily into the wood; which if he had not done, Lisle had not fallen into our hands, nor Ghent and Bruges , which both followed her example; it was so late in the year, continued my uncle Toby , and so terrible a season came on, that if things had not fallen out as they did, our troops must have perish’d in the open field.⸺
⸺Why, therefore, may not battles, an’ please your honour, as well as marriages, be made in heaven?—My uncle Toby mused⸺
Religion inclined him to say one thing, and his high idea of military skill tempted him to say another; so not being able to frame a reply