"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?