Chapters 2 to 14 demonstrate Tristram's intricate planning. A series of causes and effects interrelate these chapters and lead up to one splendid punch line: Obadiah brings the letter with the news of Bobby's death; he leaves the door open a crack so that he can hear what it contains; when he hears the news, he carries it to the kitchen for the other servants; the chance to make a good speech or to have the last word in an argument gives Walter full consolation, no matter how serious the disappointment; the latter point is illustrated by the story of the favorite mare and her mule offspring, the former by his extensive, profusely documented oration on death; the word "wife" coming through the open door halts Mrs. Shandy in her tracks; she misunderstands what Walter is saying, and she charges in to accuse him of philandering: "You have one more . . . than I know of"; he answers with "I have one less [and you don't know about that]." And that's why Walter didn't have to mourn his son's death.
(The story of the favorite mare, the Arabian stallion, and the mule has an important echo in the last chapter of Tristram Shandy in the story of the cock and the bull.)
The events in the kitchen that parallel those in the parlor are part of the human comedy in Tristram Shandy's world. Each of the servants has his own involvement in Bobby's death, each his own selfish (but completely human) response. Death is finally trivial, Tristram seems to suggest; when he presents Trim's oration, the most noteworthy thing he finds to comment on, to draw the reader's attention to, is the eloquence with which Trim dropped his hat to demonstrate how suddenly death strikes. The flirtation between Susannah and Trim — her thinking that the answer to "What is the finest face that ever man looked at" is "Susannah's face" — suffers only a very brief setback when Trim says "corruption"; death affects only the person who dies. There is profundity behind the gay levity of Tristram's storytelling.
