(The kind of Novel Society likes.)

"Sling me over a two-eyed steak, Bill," said Bobo.

Bill complied instantly, for he knew the lady's style of conversation; but Lord Cokaleek required to be told that his Marchioness was asking for one of the bloaters in the silver dish in front of his cousin, Bill Splinter.

Now, dear reader, I 'm not going to describe Cokaleek House, in the black country, or Cokaleek, or Bobo, or Bill. If you are in smart society you know all about them beforehand; and if you ain't you must puzzle them out the best way you can. The more I don't describe them the more vivid and alive they ought to seem to you. As for Bobo, I shall let her talk. That's enough. In the course of my two volumes—one thick and one thin—which is a new departure, and looks as if my publisher thought that Bobo would stretch to three volumes, and then found she wouldn't—you will be told, 1, that Bobo had brown eyes; 2, that she was five foot eight; and that is all you 'll ever know about the outside of Bobo. But you'll hear her talk, and you'll see her smoke; and if you can't evolve a fascinating personality out of cigarettes, and swears, and skittish conversation, you are not worthy to have known Bobo.

I am told that some people have taken "Bobo" for a vulgar caricature of a real personage. If they have, I can only say I feel flattered by the notion, as it may serve to differentiate me from the vulgar herd of novelists who draw on their imagination for their characters.

Chapter I. (and others).

Bobo began her bloater.

"Why the beast has a hard roe!" she cried. "Cokaleek, you shall have the roe;" and she dropped it into his tea before he could object. "You're not eating any breakfast. Put the mustard-spoon in his mouth, Bill, if he insists upon keeping it wide open while he stares at me. Ain't I fascinating this morning? Why the devil don't you notice the new feather in my hat? I always wear feathers when I'm going out clubbing, because I plume myself upon being smart. Here, somebody see if my spur's screwed on all right."

"I wish your head was screwed on half as well," said Bill, as Bobo planted her handsome Pinet boot, No. 31z, on the breakfast-table.

Cokaleek looked on and smiled, with his mouth still open. It was all he had to do in life. He had married her because she was Bobo; and the more she out-Bobo'd Bobo, the better she pleased him. He was a marquis, and a millionaire, but he had only one drawing-room at his country-seat; and the smoking-room was upstairs—obviously because there was no room for it on the ground-floor. And there was only one piano in the house, at which Bobo's gifted young friend, Sallie Rengaw, was engaged in the early morning, picking out an original funeral march with one finger, and throwing breakfast-eggs about in the fury of inspiration.

An oeuf À la coque came flying across the passage at this moment, through the open door of the dining-room, and hit Bill Splinter on the nose. Bill was Cokaleek's first-cousin, and heir-presumptive; in love, pour le bon motif, with Bobo.

"You should always give Sallie poached eggs," he remonstrated, holding his nose; "they make a worse mess when she pitches them about, but they only hurt the furniture."

"Does she always chuck eggs?" asked Cokaleek, mildly.

It was Bobo's first autumn at Cokaleek House, and the Marquis wasn't used to the ways of her gifted friends. She had another friend, besides the musical lady, a Miss Miranda Skeggs, whose conversation was like a bad dream; and these two, with Bill Splinter, were the house-party. Cokaleek, waking suddenly from an after-dinner nap, used to think he was in Hanwell.

"She chucks anything," answered Bobo; "kidneys, chops, devilled bones. How can she help it? That's the divine afflatus."

"It sounds like ta-ra-ra-boomdeay," said Cokaleek, who thought his wife meant the melody that Sallie's muscular forefinger was thumping out on the concert-grand.

"Come, come along, every manjack of you!" shrieked Sallie, from the other side of the passage. "Ain't this glorious? Ain't it majestic? Don't it bang Beethoven, and knock Sullivan into a cocked-hat? Hark at this! Ta-ra-ra! largo, for the hautboys and first fiddles. Boom! cornets and ophicleides. De——ay! bassoons, double-basses, and minute-guns on the big drum. There's a funeral march for you! With my learned orchestration it will be as good as Sebastian Bach."

"Back? Why he's never been here in my time," faltered Cokaleek. "I don't know any feller called Sebastian."

"Rippin'!" cried Bobo; "and now we'll have the funeral. Get all the cloaks and umbrellas off the stand, Miranda. Bill, bring me the coal-scuttle—that's for the coffin, doncherknow. Cokaleek, you and Bill are to be a pair of black horses; and me and Miranda 'll be the mourners. Play away, Sallie, with all your might. We're doing the funeral."

Out flew Bobo into the garden, driving Bill and Cokaleek before her, scattering coals all over the gravel walk, and slashing at the two men with her pocket-handkerchief. She rushed all round the house, past the windows of the back parlour, kitchen, and scullery; and then she suddenly remembered the cub-hunting, and tore off to the stables, tally-ho-ing to Cokaleek and Bill to follow her. The next thing they all saw was a shower of baking-pears tumbling off the garden-wall, as Bobo took it on her favourite hunter. She had been essentially Bobo all that morning.

Chapter XIII.

"Bill," said Bobo, one winter twilight, by the smoking-room fire, after her fourteenth cigarette, "I want you to run away with me."

"Rot," answered Bill.

"Yes, I do. I've ordered the carriage for half-past ten this evening. We shall catch the mail to Euston."

"You won't catch this male," said Bill. "No, Bobo, you're very good fun—in your own house, but I don't want you in mine. You are distinctly Bobo, but that's all. It isn't enough to live upon. It won't pay rent and taxes."

"You're a cur."

"No, I'm trying to be a gentleman. Besides, what's the matter with Cokaleek? Hasn't he millions, and a charming house in the heart of the collieries?"

"He's all that's delightful, only I happen to hate him. Directly I leave off chaffing him I begin to think of arsenic, and, brilliant as I am, I can't coruscate all day. It's very mean of you not to want to elope."

"I daresay; but I'm the only rational being in the book, and I want to sustain my character."

Chapter the Last.

Bobo stayed, and Bill went in the carriage that had been ordered for the elopement; and then there happened an incident so rare in the realms of fiction that it has stamped my novel at once and for ever as the work of an original mind.

Cokaleek, the noble, unappreciated husband, got himself killed in the hunting-field. He went out with Bobo one morning, and she came home, a little earlier than usual, without him, and smoked cigarettes by the fire, while he stayed out in the dusk and just meekly rolled over a hedge, with his horse uppermost. He wasn't like Guy Livingstone; he wasn't a bit like dozens of heroes of French novels, who have died the same kind of death. He was just as absolutely Cokaleek as his wife was Bobo.

And did Bill marry Bobo, or Bobo Bill?

Not she! Another woman might have done it—but not Bobo. She knew too well what the intelligent reader expected of her; so she jilted Bill, in a thoroughly cold-blooded and Bobo-ish manner, and got herself married to an Austrian Prince at half-an-hour's notice, by special licence from the A. of C.