Explore "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" by Laurence Sterne on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Though my father travelled homewards, as I told you, in none of the best of moods, -- pshawing and pishing all the way down, -- yet he had the complaisance to keep the worst part of the story still to himself; -- which was the resolution he had taken of doing himself the justice, which my uncle Toby's clause in the marriage-settlement empowered him; nor was it till the very night in which I was begot, which was thirteen months after, that she had the least intimation of his design: when my father, happening, as you remember, to be a little chagrin'd and out of temper, -- -- -took occasion as they lay chatting gravely in bed afterwards, talking over what was to come, -- -- -to let her know that she must accommodate herself as well as she could to the bargain made between them in their marriage-deeds; which was to lye-in of her next child in the country, to balance the last year's journey.
My father was a gentleman of many virtues, -- but he had a strong spice of that in his temper, which might, or might not, add to the number.