CHAPTER XXXIX

Just as the corporal was humming, to begin--in waddled Dr. _Slop_. --’Tis not two-pence matter--the corporal shall go on in the next chapter, let who will come in.----

Well, my good doctor, cried my father sportively, for the transitions of his passions were unaccountably sudden, --and what has this whelp of mine to say to the matter?

Had my father been asking after the amputation of the tail of a puppy-dog--he could not have done it in a more careless air: the system which Dr. _Slop_ had laid down, to treat the accident by, no way allowed of such a mode of enquiry. --He sat down.

Pray, Sir, quoth my uncle _Toby_, in a manner which could not go unanswered, --in what condition is the boy? --’Twill end in a _phimosis_, replied Dr. _Slop_.

I am no wiser than I was, quoth my uncle _Toby_--returning his pipe into his mouth. ----Then let the corporal go on, said my father, with his medical lecture. --The corporal made a bow to his old friend, Dr. _Slop_, and then delivered his opinion concerning radical heat and radical moisture, in the following words.

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