The cause? "My mother, you must know, — but I have fifty things more necessary to let you know first." Among them, there is his father still lying across the bed; he promised he "would go back to them in half an hour, and five and thirty minutes are laps'd already." And there is, very important, "a tale out of Slawkenbergius to translate."
The difference between Walter and Toby is again illustrated, this time by Walter's trying to explain Slawkenbergius to his brother. Toby resists all efforts to make him understand; even the great Locke would have despaired at making him comprehend the matter.
Walter persists, but since he unfortunately uses the word "siege," Toby's fancy takes a "short flight to the bowling-green" and his fortifications. When Walter speaks of the "ingenuity these learned men have all shewn in their solutions of noses," Toby asks, "Can noses be dissolved?" Again Walter loses his patience. For Toby, the only reason that "one man's nose is longer than another's" is that "God pleases to have it so." When Walter replies that "there is more religion" in Toby's answer "than sound science," Toby whistles "Lillabullero."
Walter believes that all civilization could be reconstructed from Slawkenbergius' "rich treasury of inexhaustible knowledge," and although Tristram doesn't consider it with the same reverence as his father, he admits that he likes the "tales," and he promises to tell the reader "the ninth tale of his tenth decad."
