Читать книгу Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads - Rudyard Kipling - Страница 6

  Ere the steamer bore him Eastward, Sleary was engaged to marry

  An attractive girl at Tunbridge, whom he called “my little Carrie.”

  Sleary’s pay was very modest; Sleary was the other way.

  Who can cook a two-plate dinner on eight poor rupees a day?

  Long he pondered o’er the question in his scantly furnished quarters —

  Then proposed to Minnie Boffkin, eldest of Judge Boffkin’s daughters.

  Certainly an impecunious Subaltern was not a catch,

  But the Boffkins knew that Minnie mightn’t make another match.

  So they recognised the business and, to feed and clothe the bride,

  Got him made a Something Something somewhere on the Bombay side.

  Anyhow, the billet carried pay enough for him to marry —

  As the artless Sleary put it: – “Just the thing for me and Carrie.”

  Did he, therefore, jilt Miss Boffkin – impulse of a baser mind?

  No! He started epileptic fits of an appalling kind.

  [Of his modus operandi only this much I could gather: —

  “Pears’s shaving sticks will give you little taste and lots of lather.”]

  Frequently in public places his affliction used to smite

  Sleary with distressing vigour – always in the Boffkins’ sight.

  Ere a week was over Minnie weepingly returned his ring,

  Told him his “unhappy weakness” stopped all thought of marrying.

  Sleary bore the information with a chastened holy joy, —

  Epileptic fits don’t matter in Political employ, —

  Wired three short words to Carrie – took his ticket, packed his kit —

  Bade farewell to Minnie Boffkin in one last, long, lingering fit.

  Four weeks later, Carrie Sleary read – and laughed until she wept —

  Mrs. Boffkin’s warning letter on the “wretched epilept.”…

  Year by year, in pious patience, vengeful Mrs. Boffkin sits

  Waiting for the Sleary babies to develop Sleary’s fits.