wed a bead. Child thought it capital fun, went back next day, and
swallowed another bead.'

'Bless my heart,' said Mr. Pickwick, 'what a dreadful thing! I beg your
pardon, Sir. Go on.'

'Next day, child swallowed two beads; the day after that, he treated
himself to three, and so on, till in a week's time he had got through
the necklace--five-and-twenty beads in all. The sister, who was an
industrious girl, and seldom treated herself to a bit of finery, cried
her eyes out, at the loss of the necklace; looked high and low for it;
but, I needn't say, didn't find it. A few days afterwards, the family
were at dinner--baked shoulder of mutton, and potatoes under it--the
child, who wasn't hungry, was playing about the room, when 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, damme, 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.'

'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?'

'Certainly not,' replied 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.

Another knock at the door announced a large-headed young man in a black
wig, who brought with him a scorbutic youth in a long stock. The next
comer was a gentleman in a shirt emblazoned with pink anchors, who was
closely foll