Chapter C: H a P. IX

—UPON my honour, Sir, you have tore every bit of skin quite off the back of both my hands with your forceps, cried my uncle _Toby_—and you have crush’d all my knuckles into the bargain with them to a jelly. ’Tis your own fault, said Dr. _Slop_——you should have clinch’d your two fists together into the form of a child’s head as I told you, and sat firm.—I did so, answered my uncle _Toby_.——Then the points of my forceps have not been sufficiently arm’d, or the rivet wants closing—or else the cut on my thumb has made me a little aukward—or possibly—’Tis well, quoth my father, interrupting the detail of possibilities—that the experiment was not first made upon my child’s head-piece.——It would not have been a cherry-stone the worse, answered Dr. _Slop_.—I maintain it, said my uncle _Toby_, it would have broke the cerebellum (unless indeed the skull had been as hard as a granado) and turn’d it all into a perfect posset.——Pshaw! replied Dr. _Slop_, a child’s head is naturally as soft as the pap of an apple;—the sutures give way—and besides, I could have extracted by the feet after.—Not you, said she.——I rather wish you would begin that way, quoth my father.

Pray do, added my uncle _Toby_.