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“See, Tuan,” and he made another motion, and the monkey leaped to the ground and commenced to run around his master, hopping first on one foot and then on the other, raising his arms over his head like a ballet dancer. After every revolution he would stop and turn a handspring.

The Malay all the time kept up a droning kind of a song in his native tongue, improvising as he went along.

The tenor of it was that one Hamat, a poor Malay, but a good Mohammedan, who had never been to Mecca, wanted to go to become a Hadji. He had no money but he had a good monkey that was very dear to him. He had found it in a distant jungle, beyond Johore, when a little baby; had brought it up like one of his own children and had taught it to dance and salaam.

Now he must sell the monkey to the great Tuan, or Lord, that the money might help take him to Mecca. The monkey must dance well and please the mighty Tuan.

As the little fellow danced, he kept one eye on me as though he understood it all.

“How old is he?” I asked, becoming interested.

“Just as old as your Excellency would like,” he replied, bowing.

“Is he a year old?”

“If the Tuan please.”

“Well, how much do you want for him?”

“What your Excellency can give.”

“Twenty-five dollars?” I asked.

His face lit up from chin to forehead. He hitched nervously at the folds of his sarong, and changed the quid of red betel-nut from one corner of his mouth to the other.

“Here, Hamat,” I said, laughing, “here is five dollars; take it; when you come back from Mecca with a green turban come and see me. If I am sick of the monkey, you can have him back.”

So commenced our acquaintance with Lepas. We got into the habit of calling him Lepas, because it was the Malay for “let go,” which definition we broadened until it became a term of correction for every form of mischief. He was such a restless, active little imp, with hands into everything and upon everything, that it was “Lepas!” from morning to night.

He soon learned the word’s twofold meaning. If we said “Lepas” sternly, he subsided at once; but when we called it pleasantly he came running across the room and leaped into our laps.

It did not take Lepas as long to forget his former master as it did to forget his former habits. In truth, his civilization was never more than skin deep.

He would sit for hours cuddled up in the mistress’s lap, playing with her work and making deft slaps at passing flies, until he had thoroughly convinced her of his perfect trustworthiness. Then, the moment her back was turned, he would slip away to her bureau, and such a mess as he would make of her ribbons and laces!

I think he liked the servants better than he did us. He would dance and turn handsprings and salaam for them, but never for the mistress or myself. Such tricks, he seemed to think, were beneath his new position in society.

He had a standing grudge against me, however, for insisting on his bath in the big Shanghai jar every day, and took delight in rolling in the red dust of the road the moment he was through.

It was not long before he had a feud with the monkeys in the trees, back of the house. He would stand on the ground, within easy reach of the house, and as saucily as you please, till they were worked up into a white heat of rage over his remarks.

Once he caught a baby monkey that had become entangled in the wiry lallang grass under the trees, and dragged it screeching into the house. Before we could get to him he had nearly drowned it by treating it to a bath,–an act, I suppose, intended to convey to me his opinion of my humane efforts to keep him clean.