Lucinda Make-Piece Farthing lived in India and loved to ride an elephant,
but one day fell off into a pile of dung,
only to be consoled by a little man in a loin cloth.

He’d looked at her intensely, then declared,
‘I’ve watched you, and noticed that when our children approach.

‘Indeed, you are respectful when we point out,
that sometimes people have to follow their own path.

'For you share our views, Miss Farthing,
and I foretell you’ll meet a like-minded soul.

‘Now, seeing you discommoded I shall do you a deal.

Let me spray you with my herbal disinfectant,
made from the root of the Bangalore moth,
and you will appear as a newly-sprung flower that smells so fragrant,
to a man who’s waiting for your love,

‘But I will do this only on the condition you
remember me as the precursor to a great prophet.

A brief while later she was hailed by General Montgomery-Hyde,
The distinguished military man recognised her as someone his son – a lieutenant in the Guards,
who was at that moment leading his cavalry
troop in pursuit of a known agitator – had,
before he’d learned of her radical views,
once regarded as a suitable wife.

‘Dammit!’, he mused, ‘she’d even suggested the
natives were equal in status to us,
and quoted a fellow known as the ‘Father of the Mahatma’,

Why, she’d even laughed at cockney corporal McFloose,’
who said, ‘Cor blimey, I’d love to make you my struggle and strife.’

After informing the general she was in good health,
he rode some way up the path, glancing behind,
for, ‘Dammit, she was indeed a good looking woman!’
But Lucinda had hidden behind an ant’s nest to extricate a
troublesome insect which had invaded her garment,
but bumped into a young man.
‘How do you do?’ Came the charming response,
‘I’m Timothy Tickworthy-Hart, but you can call me Tim.’

Lucinda felt there was something not quite right about him,
was it his accent or manner which belied his handsome appearance,
as he backed away from the nest?
 

He said, ‘I say, these creatures are even nastier than my aunts in Blighty.’

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ Lucinda asked,
holding out a flask from her well-stocked picnic basket.

‘I say Miss, I wasn’t really hiding from a tiger,’
Tim admitted later, ‘I was having a…

‘Oh, I guessed as much,‘ Lucinda interrupted,
‘I was also embarrassed when a beetle crawled up my dress…’

‘Do not worry,’ Cried the young chap...
‘Hang on, I shall a take deep breath before unburdening myself...
‘I saw you in the audience when Macaroni’s Big Tent
circus visited the village of Much Scratching,
featuring myself, Europe’s leading child acrobat.

You looked dumbfounded at my acrobatic skill,
and the arrow was immediately dispatched from that great being Cupid.’

‘Oh, what an interesting story,’ replied a stunned Lucinda.

‘Do you always talk in para or even full rhyme?’

‘Well, I’m influenced by that poet Lord Byron, a known romantic.’

She blushed, ‘I am flattered you followed me so far, and you are indeed quite poetic.

‘But I am engaged to Percy Partington-Shand of the Lancashire Fusiliers.
He won a medal in Zululand, gaining the Zulu king’s favour
by performing a trick where he ran the gauntlet of an impi’s spears,
surviving without a scratch.

‘In return he was granted the princess’s favour,
a woman he assured me was not at all pretty,
and of course had to consummate the match.

‘But it was all part of his duty, and he returned to great acclaim
– while his men were massacred at the battle of Isandwhalna.

‘The malicious gossip became too much,
so we both sailed to Bombay where he joined the Punjabi Guides,
and he’s now far away on a mission to enlist the help of warring tribes.’

At this Timothy sighed and said, almost reluctantly,
‘I am afraid I can’t compete with such tales of derring do,
I’m only a poor country boy who jumps when people say boo!

‘You’re talking in rhyme again!’

‘Oh, sorry. My friend Billy Boyd,
whom I met in an Irish bar met while acrobatting in Stockholm...

‘Oh,’ Lucy cried, ‘a new word, you are clever!’
…‘Well, he knows that mind specialist, Sigmund Freud, 
who says it something called obsessive compulsive disorder.

‘Anyway, when my father talked of his army days,
it filled him with rare pride, of Salamanca and Balaclava,
but when the recruiting party visited our village, I would run and hide.

‘So I became a reporter and met McDougall of The Times, who covered the Zulu War.
He assured me that your fiancée was indeed a coward.

‘Disillusioned, I travelled far and wide,
following the path of Britain’s glorious colonial adventure.
But I became dismayed at its lust for power and obsession with cricket,
and was banned from gentlemen’s clubs, from Bombay to Bloemfontein,
accused of being unpatriotic.

‘I even got into a fight with two officers of the Enniskillen Dragoons,
after suggesting we recompense the Zulus for our unlawful invasion of their territory,
and defended the propriety of two loin-clad native women,
at the mercy of the licentious soldiery.’

‘Oh,’ answered her astounded companion, 
‘in that case you seem like the right chap for me,
for I’m now secretly working for Indian independence.’

‘Let me introduce you to my mentor.
He models himself on John The Baptist,
the chap who prophesied the arrival of Jesus Christ.
You can address him as ‘Father of the Mahatma’.