My reason for choosing these two watches, out of a trayful of similar quality, was perhaps a little whimsical--viz., that the numbers they bore happened to be sequents. Each had its number engraved on its white enamel dial, in small but very clear figures, placed a little above the central spindle; also upon the extreme verge, at the nadir below the seconds hand, the name of the maker, “Barwise, London.” They were not what are called “hunting watches,” but had strong and very clear lunette glasses fixed in rims of substantial gold. And their respective numbers were 7777 and 7778. Carrying these in wash-leather bags, I gave George Bowring his choice of the two; and he chose the one with four figures of seven, making some little joke about it, not good enough to repeat, nor even bad enough to laugh at. CHAPTER II. For six years after this all went smoothly with George Bowring and myself. We met almost daily, although we did not lodge together (as once we had done) nor spend the evening hours together, because, of course, he had now his home and family rising around him. By the summer of 1832 he had three children, and was expecting a fourth at no very distant time. His eldest son was named after me, “Robert Bistre,” for such is my name, which I have often thought of changing. Not that the name is at all a bad one, as among friends and relations, but that, when I am addressed by strangers, “Mr. Bistre” has a jingling sound, suggestive of childish levity. “Sir Robert Bistre,” however, would sound uncommonly well; and (as some people say) less eminent artists--but perhaps, after all, I am not so very old as to be in a hurry. In the summer of 1832--as elderly people will call to mind, and the younger sort will have heard or read--the cholera broke over London like a bursting meteor. Such panic had not been known, I believe, since the time of the plague, in the reign of Charles II., as painted (beyond any skill of the brush) by the simple and wonderful pen of Defoe. There had been in the interval many seasons--or at least I am informed so--of sickness more widely spread, and of death more frequent, if not so sudden. But now this new plague, attacking so harshly a man's most perceptive and valued part, drove rich people out of London faster than horses (not being attacked) could fly. Well, used as I was to a good deal of poison in dealing with my colours, I felt no alarm on my own account, but was anxious about my landlady. This was an excellently honest woman of fifty-five summers at the utmost, but weakly confessing to as much as forty. She had made a point of insisting upon a brisket of beef and a flat-polled cabbage for dinner every Saturday; and the same, with a “cowcumber,” cold on Sunday; and for supper a soft-roed herring, ever since her widowhood.