Page:Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads, Kipling, 1899.djvu/24

 DELILAH

was a lady—not too young—

With a perfect taste in dresses and a badly bitted tongue,

With a thirst for information, and a greater thirst for praise,

And a little house in Simla in the Prehistoric Days.

By reason of her marriage to a gentleman in power,

Delilah was acquainted with the gossip of the hour;

And many little secrets, of a half-official kind,

Were whispered to Delilah, and she bore them all in mind.

She patronized extensively a man, Ulysses Gunne,

Whose mode of earning money was a low and shameful one. 10