suddenly there was heard a devil of a noise, like a small hailstorm. Don't do that, my boy,' said the father. I ain't a doin' nothing,' said the child. 'Well, don't do it again,' said the father. There was a short silence, and then the noise began again, worse than ever. If you don't mind what I say, my boy,' said the father, 'you'll find yourself in bed, in something less than a pig's whisper.' He gave the child a shake to make him obedient, and such a rattling ensued as nobody ever heard before. 'Why, dam'me, it's in the child!' said the father, 'he's got the croup in the wrong place!' 'No, I haven't, father,' said the child, beginning to cry, 'it's the necklace; I swallowed it, father.'-The father caught the child up, and ran with him to the hospital the beads in the boy's stomach rattling all the way with the jolting; and the people looking up in the air, and down in the cellars, to see where the unusual sound came from. He's in the hospital now," said Jack Hopkins, "and he makes such a devil of a noise when he walks about, that they're obliged to muffle him in a watchman's coat, for fear he should wake the patients!"

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That's the most extraordinary case I ever heard of," said Mr. Pickwick, with an emphatic blow on the table.

“Oh, that's nothing," said Jack Hopkins; "is it, Bob?"

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Certainly not," replied Mr. Bob Sawyer.

“Very singular things occur in our profession, I can assure you, sir," said Hopkins.

"So I should be disposed to imagine,” replied Mr. Pickwick.

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XXIII

Sawyer, late Nockemorf

"WHAT, don't you know me?" said the

medical gentleman.

Mr. Winkle murmured, in reply, that he had not that pleasure.

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'Why, then," said the medical gentleman, there are hopes for me yet; I may attend half the old women in Bristol if I 've decent luck. Get out, you mouldy old villain, get out!" With this adjuration, which was addressed to the large book, the medical gentleman kicked the volume with remarkable agility to the further end of the shop, and, pulling off his green spectacles, grinned the identical grin of Robert Sawyer, Esquire, formerly of Guy's Hospital in the Borough, with a private residence in Lant Street.

"You don't mean to say you weren't down upon me!" said Mr. Bob Sawyer, shaking Mr. Winkle's hand with friendly warmth.

"Upon my word I was not," replied Mr. Winkle, returning the pressure.

"I wonder you didn't see the name," said Bob Sawyer, calling his friend's attention to the outer door, on which, in the same white paint, were traced the words, “Sawyer, late Nockemorf."

"It never caught my eye," returned Mr. Winkle.

"Lord, if I had known who you were, I should have rushed out, and caught you in my arms,"

said Bob Sawyer; "but upon my life, I thought you were the King's-taxes.

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No!" said Mr. Winkle.

I did, indeed,” responded Bob Sawyer, “and I was just going to say that I wasn't at home, but if you 'd leave a message I'd be sure to give it to myself; for he don't know me; no more does the Lighting and Paving. I think the Church-rates guesses who I am, and I know the Waterworks does, because I drew a tooth of his when I first came down here. But come in, come in!" Chattering in this way, Mr. Bob Sawyer pushed Mr. Winkle into the back room, where, amusing himself by boring little circular caverns in the chimney-piece with a red-hot poker, sat no less a person than Mr. Benjamin Allen.

"Well!" said Mr. Winkle. "This is indeed a pleasure I did not expect. What a very nice place you have here!"

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Pretty well, pretty well," replied Bob Sawyer. I passed, soon after that precious party, and my friends came down with the needful for this business ; so I put on a black suit of clothes, and a pair of spectacles, and came here to look as solemn as I could."

“And a very snug little business you have, no doubt?" said Mr. Winkle, knowingly.

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Very," replied Bob Sawyer. So snug, that at the end of a few years you might put all the profits in a wine glass, and cover 'em over with a gooseberry leaf."

"You cannot surely mean that?" said Mr. Winkle. "The stock itself—"

"Dummies, my dear boy," said Bob Sawyer; "half the drawers have nothing in 'em, and the other half don't open.”

"Nonsense!" said Mr. Winkle.

"Fact-honour !" returned Bob Sawyer, stepping out into the shop, and demonstrating the veracity of the assertion by divers hard pulls at the little gilt knobs on the counterfeit drawers. "Hardly any

thing real in the shop but the leeches, and they are second-hand."

"I shouldn't have thought it!" exclaimed Mr. Winkle, much surprised.

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"I hope not," replied Bob Sawyer," else where 's the use of appearances, eh? But what will you take? Do as we do? That's right. Ben, my fine fellow, put your hand into the cupboard, and bring out the patent digester."

Mr. Benjamin Allen smiled his readiness, and produced from the closet at his elbow a black bottie half full of brandy.

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“You don't take water, of course?" said Bob Sawyer.

"Thank you,” replied Mr. Winkle. “It's rather early. I should like to qualify it, if you have no objection."

"None in the least, if you can reconcile it to your conscience,” replied Bob Sawyer; tossing off, as he spoke, a glass of the liquor with great relish. “Ben, the pipkin !

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Mr. Benjamin Allen drew forth, from the same hiding-place, a small brass pipkin, which Bob Sawyer observed he prided himself upon, particularly because it looked so business-like. The

water in the professional pipkin having been made to boil, in course of time, by various little shovelfuls of coal, which Mr. Bob Sawyer took out of a practicable window-seat, labelled "Soda-Water," Mr. Winkle adulterated his brandy; and the conversation was becoming general, when it was interrupted by the entrance into the shop of a boy, in a sober grey livery and a gold-laced hat, with a small covered basket under his arm: whom Mr. Bob Sawyer immediately hailed with, “Tom, you vagabond, come here.”

The boy presented himself accordingly.

"You've been stopping to over all the posts in Bristol, you idle young scamp!" said Mr. Bob Sawyer.

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'No, sir, I haven't,” replied the boy.

"You had better not!" said Mr. Bob Sawyer, with a threatening aspect. "Who do you suppose will ever employ a professional man, when they see his boy playing at marbles in the gutter, or flying the garter in the horse-road? Have you no feelings for your profession, you groveller? Did Did you leave all the medicine?

"The powders for the child, at the large house with the new family, and the pills to be taken four times a day at the ill-tempered old gentleman's with the gouty leg?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then shut the door, and mind the shop."

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Come," said Mr. Winkle, as the boy retired, "things are not quite so bad as you would have me