"I think," said Uncle Toby, "it would not be amiss, brother, if we rung the bell." They then learn that Mrs. Shandy has begun labor; Mrs. Shandy has sent Susannah for the old midwife, and Walter sends Obadiah for Dr. Slop (who lives eight miles away).
In answer to Walter's question as to why Mrs. Shandy insists on having the old midwife when an expert obstetrician is available, Toby says, "My sister, I dare say, . . . does not care to let a man come so near her ****." Tristram points out the beauty of those four asterisks; it is impossible to say whether Toby added a word or left the sentence as given above.
Walter considers the idea ridiculous and says so. Toby demurs, pointing out that he knows practically nothing about women, and he alludes to the "shock I received the year after the demolition of Dunkirk, in my affair with the widow Wadman; — which shock you know I should not have received, but from my total ignorance of the sex." As Walter is about to tell his brother about the "right end [and] the wrong" end of a woman, there is a loud rap at the door.
Tristram says that "it is about an hour and a half's tolerable good reading since my uncle Toby rung the bell, when Obadiah was order'd to saddle a horse, and go for Dr. Slop." (He is referring to what happened — although we didn't see it — when he interrupted Toby's sentence in Book 1, Chapter 21.) The critics might say that it has been only "two minutes, thirteen seconds, and three fifths" — referring to the moment when Tristram actually does tell us the end of Toby's sentence (two short chapters back), and Obadiah is sent off on the eight-mile trip to fetch Dr. Slop. If the critic insists that Obadiah could not have gotten there and back already, then Tristram concedes that actually Obadiah met Dr. Slop "three-score yards from the stable-yard"! The doctor was coming by "merely to see how matters went on."
