Though my father travelled homewards, as I told you, in none of the best of moods, --pshawing and pishing all the way down, --yet he had the complaisance to keep the worst part of the story still to himself; --which was the resolution he had taken of doing himself the justice, which my uncle _Toby’s_ clause in the marriage-settlement empowered him; nor was it till the very night in which I was begot, which was thirteen months after, that she had the least intimation of his design: when my father, happening, as you remember, to be a little chagrin’d and out of temper, ----took occasion as they lay chatting gravely in bed afterwards, talking over what was to come, ----to let her know that she must accommodate herself as well as she could to the bargain made between them in their marriage-deeds; which was to lye-in of her next child in the country, to balance the last year’s journey. My father was a gentleman of many virtues, --but he had a strong spice of that in his temper, which might, or might not, add to the number. --’Tis known by the name of perseverance in a good cause, --and of obstinacy in a bad one: Of this my mother had so much knowledge, that she knew ’twas to no purpose to make any remonstrance, --so she e’en resolved to sit down quietly, and make the most of it. CHAPTER XVIII As the point was that night agreed, or rather determined, that my mother should lye-in of me in the country, she took her measures accordingly; for which purpose, when she was three days, or thereabouts, gone with child, she began to cast her eyes upon the midwife, whom you have so often heard me mention; and before the week was well got round, as the famous Dr. _Manningham_ was not to be had, she had come to a final determination in her mind, ----notwithstanding there was a scientific operator within so near a call as eight miles of us, and who, moreover, had expressly wrote a five shillings book upon the subject of midwifery, in which he had exposed, not only the blunders of the sisterhood itself, ----but had likewise superadded many curious improvements for the quicker extraction of the fœtus in cross births, and some other cases of danger, which belay us in getting into the world; notwithstanding all this, my mother, I say, was absolutely determined to trust her life, and mine with it, into no soul’s hand but this old woman’s only. --Now this I like; --when we cannot get at the very thing we wish----never to take up with the next best in degree to it: --no; that’s pitiful beyond description; --it is no more than a week from this very day, in which I am now writing this book for the edification of the world; --which is _March_ 9, 1759, ----that my dear, dear _Jenny_, observing I looked a little grave, as she stood cheapening a silk of five-and-twenty shillings a yard, --told the mercer, she was sorry she had given him so much trouble; --and immediately went and bought herself a yard-wide stuff of tenpence a yard.