Page:Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads, Kipling, 1899.djvu/20

6 He warbled like a bul-bul, but particularly at

Cornelia Agrippina, who was musical and fat.

She controlled a humble husband, who, in turn, controlled a Dept.,

Where Cornelia Agrippina's human singing-birds were kept

From April to October on a plump retaining fee,

Supplied, of course, per mensem, by the Indian Treasury.

Cornelia used to sing to him, and Jenkins used to play;

He praised unblushingly her notes, for he was false as they;

So when the winds of April turned the budding roses brown,

Cornelia told her husband:—Tom, you mustn't send him down.

They haled him from his regiment, which didn't much regret him;

They found for him an office-stool, and on that stool they set him.