CHAPTER VII

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 cheary-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 exactly to his mind----my uncle _Toby_ said nothing at all; and the corporal finished his story.

As _Tom_ perceived, an’ please your honour, that he gained ground, and that all he had said upon the subject of sausages was kindly taken, he went on to help her a little in making them. ----First, by taking hold of the ring of the sausage whilst she stroked the forced meat down with her hand----then by cutting the strings into proper lengths, and holding them in his hand, whilst she took them out one by one----then, by putting them across her mouth, that she might take them out as she wanted them----and so on from little to more, till at last he adventured to tie the sausage himself, whilst she held the snout.----

----Now a widow, an’ please your honour, always chuses a second husband as unlike the first as she can: so the affair was more than half settled in her mind before _Tom_ mentioned it.

She made a feint however of defending herself, by snatching up a sausage: ----_Tom_ instantly laid hold of another------

But seeing _Tom’s_ had more gristle in it------

She signed the capitulation----and _Tom_ sealed it; and there was an end of the matter.

##