But in order to put a stop to the practice of any unfair play on the part of my mother, which a marriage-article of this nature too manifestly opened a door to, and which indeed had never been thought of at all, but for my uncle _Toby Shandy_; --a clause was added in security of my father, which was this: --“That in case my mother hereafter should, at any time, put my father to the trouble and expence of a _London_ journey, upon false cries and tokens; ----that for every such instance, she should forfeit all the right and title which the covenant gave her to the next turn; ----but to no more, --and so on, _toties quoties_, in as effectual a manner, as if such a covenant betwixt them had not been made.” --This, by the way, was no more than what was reasonable; --and yet, as reasonable as it was, I have ever thought it hard that the whole weight of the article should have fallen entirely, as it did, upon myself. But I was begot and born to misfortunes: --for my poor mother, whether it was wind or water--or a compound of both, --or neither; --or whether it was simply the mere swell of imagination and fancy in her; --or how far a strong wish and desire to have it so, might mislead her judgment: --in short, whether she was deceived or deceiving in this matter, it no way becomes me to decide. The fact was this, That in the latter end of _September_ 1717, which was the year before I was born, my mother having carried my father up to town much against the grain, --he peremptorily insisted upon the clause; --so that I was doom’d, by marriage-articles, to have my nose squeez’d as flat to my face, as if the destinies had actually spun me without one. How this event came about, --and what a train of vexatious disappointments, in one stage or other of my life, have pursued me from the mere loss, or rather compression, of this one single member, --shall be laid before the reader all in due time. CHAPTER XVI My father, as anybody may naturally imagine, came down with my mother into the country, in but a pettish kind of a humour. The first twenty or five-and-twenty miles he did nothing in the world but fret and teaze himself, and indeed my mother too, about the cursed expence, which he said might every shilling of it have been saved; --then what vexed him more than everything else was, the provoking time of the year, --which, as I told you, was towards the end of _September_, when his wall-fruit and green gages especially, in which he was very curious, were just ready for pulling: ----“Had he been whistled up to _London_, upon a _Tom Fool’s_ errand, in any other month of the whole year, he should not have said three words about it.”