Uncle Toby gives up the study of projectiles and turns to the "practical part of fortification only." He begins to long mightily for his recovery, although we don't know yet what he has in mind. Tristram will tell us in the following chapter what Toby has in mind, and after that, "'twill be time to return back to the parlour fire-side, where we left my uncle Toby in the middle of his sentence."
The wound begins to heal nicely, so Toby and his servant, Corporal Trim, embark for Shandy Hall in the country. The reason is that Toby's bedside table was too small to hold all his books and apparatus. When he asked Trim to order him a larger table, Trim suggested that they go to Toby's estate near Shandy Hall; there, under Uncle Toby's expert direction, he would construct on the lawn scale models of the fortifications, complete in every particular so that "it should be worth all the world's riding twenty miles to go and see it." Uncle Toby blushed with joy at the idea, and they are off on his hobby-horse.
Tristram says that the history of their campaigns will make an interesting "underplot in the . . . working up of this drama," but later. "At present the scene must drop, and change for the parlour fire-side."
