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.
I expected as a matter of course to lose another pair of shoes or something, in payment for this unneighborly behavior, but the colony in the trees seemed to know that I was innocent. It was not long before they caught the true culprit, and gave him such a beating that he was quiet and subdued for days.
But Lepas was a lovable little fellow with all his mischief. Every afternoon when I came home from the office, tired out with the heat and the fierce glare of the sun, he would hop over to my chair, whistle soothingly, and make funny little chirrups with his lips, until I noticed him.
Then he would crawl quietly up the legs of the chair until he reached my shoulder, where he would commence with his cool little fingers to inspect my eyes and nose, and to pick over carefully each hair of my mustache and head.