Page:Rudyard Kipling's verse - Inclusive Edition 1885-1918.djvu/40

22 Now wasn't that nice, when want of pice

Forbade us twain to marry,

That old Sir J., in the kindest way,

Made me his Secretarry?



MUNICIPAL

T WAS an August evening and, in snowy garments clad,

I paid a round of visits in the lines of Hezabad;

When, presently, my Waler saw, and did not like at all,

A Commissariat elephant careering down the Mall.

I couldn't see the driver, and across my mind it rushed

That that Commissariat elephant had suddenly gone musth.

I didn't care to meet him, and I couldn't well get down,

So I let the Waler have it, and we headed for the town.

The buggy was a new one and, praise Dykes, it stood the strain,

Till the Waler jumped a bullock just above the City Drain;

And the next that I remember was a hurricane of squeals,

And the creature making toothpicks of my five-foot patent wheels.

He seemed to want the owner, so I fled, distraught with fear,

To the Main Drain sewage-outfall while he snorted in my ear—

Reached the four-foot drain-head safely and, in darkness and despair,

Felt the brute's proboscis fingering my terror-stiffened hair.

