--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 in 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_. CHAPTER XVII ----And pray, good woman, after all, will you take upon you to say, it may not be the child’s hip, as well as the child’s head? ------’Tis most certainly the head, replied the midwife. Because, continued Dr. _Slop_ (turning to my father) as positive as these old ladies generally are--’tis a point very difficult to know--and yet of the greatest consequence to be known; ----because, Sir, if the hip is mistaken for the head--there is a possibility (if it is a boy) that the forceps * * * * * * ----What the possibility was, Dr. _Slop_ whispered very low to my father, and then to my uncle _Toby_. ----There is no such danger, continued he, with the head. --No, in truth, quoth my father--but when your possibility has taken place at the hip--you may as well take off the head too. ----It is morally impossible the reader should understand this----’tis enough Dr. _Slop_ understood it; ----so taking the green bays bag in his hand, with the help of _Obadiah’s_ pumps, he tripp’d pretty nimbly, for a man of his size, across the room to the door------and from the door was shewn the way, by the good old midwife, to my mother’s apartments. CHAPTER XVIII It is two hours, and ten minutes--and no more--cried my father, looking at his watch, since Dr. _Slop_ and _Obadiah_ arrived--and I know not how it happens, brother _Toby_--but to my imagination it seems almost an age. ----Here--pray, Sir, take hold of my cap--nay, take the bell along with it, and my pantoufles too. Now, Sir, they are all at your service; and I freely make you a present of ’em, on condition you give me all your attention to this chapter.