'Tis a pity, Trim, said my uncle Toby, resting with his hand upon the corporal's shoulder, as they both stood surveying their works,--that we have not a couple of field-pieces to mount in the gorge of that new redoubt;--'twould secure the lines all along there, and make the attack on that side quite complete:--get me a couple cast, Trim.
Your honour shall have them, replied Trim, before tomorrow morning.
It was the joy of Trim's heart, nor was his fertile head ever at a loss for expedients in doing it, to supply my uncle Toby in his campaigns, with whatever his fancy called for; had it been his last crown, he would have sate down and hammered it into a paderero, to have prevented a single wish in his master. The corporal had already,--what with cutting off the ends of my uncle Toby's spouts--hacking and chiseling up the sides of his leaden gutters,--melting down his pewter shaving-bason,--and going at last, like Lewis the Fourteenth, on to the top of the church, for spare ends, &c.--he had that very campaign brought no less than eight new battering cannons, besides three demi-culverins, into the field; my uncle Toby's demand for two more pieces for the redoubt, had set the corporal at work again; and no better resource offering, he had taken the two leaden weights from the nursery window: and as the sash pullies, when the lead was gone, were of no kind of use, he had taken them away also, to make a couple of wheels for one of their carriages.
He had dismantled every sash-window in my uncle Toby's house long before, in the very same way,--though not always in the same order; for sometimes the pullies have been wanted, and not the lead,--so then he began with the pullies,--and the pullies being picked out, then the lead became useless,--and so the lead went to pot too.
--A great Moral might be picked handsomely out of this, but I have not time--'tis enough to say, wherever the demolition began, 'twas equally fatal to the sash window.
