| |
| | Though tangled and twisted the course of true love |
| This ditty explains, |
| No tangle’s so tangled it cannot improve |
| If the Lover has brains. |
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— | 5 |
| 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. | 10 |
| 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:— | 15 |
| “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. | 20 |
| |
| 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— | 25 |
| 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. | |
| |
