“Dear me, I see,” observed Mr. Winkle; “what an excellent plan!”

“Oh, Ben and I have hit upon a dozen such,” replied Bob Sawyer, with great glee. “The lamplighter has eighteenpence a week to pull the night-bell for ten minutes every time he comes round; and my boy always rushes into the church just before the psalms, when the people have got nothing to do but look about ’em, and calls me out, with horror and dismay depicted on his countenance. ‘Bless my soul,’ everybody says, ‘somebody taken suddenly ill! Sawyer, late Nockemorf, sent for. What a business that young man has!’ ”

At the termination of this disclosure of some of the mysteries of medicine, Mr. Bob Sawyer and his friend, Ben Allen, threw themselves back in their respective chairs, and laughed boisterously. When they had enjoyed the joke to their heart’s content, the discourse changed to topics in which Mr. Winkle was more immediately interested.