I knew that it was all make-believe, so I half closed my eyes and did not move.
The chattering stopped. The little fellow looked about curiously, drew his mouth
up into a pucker, whistled once or twice to make sure I was not awake, and
reached out his bony arm for a few crumbs of cake that had fallen near.
He was not more than a foot in height. His diminutive body seemed to have been
fitted into a badly worn skin that was two sizes too large for him, and the scalp
of his forehead moved about like an overgrown wig.
He was the most ordinary kind of gray, jungle monkey, not even a wah-wah or
spider face.
“Well,” I said, after we had thoroughly inspected each other, “where are my
shoes?”
Like a flash the whistling ceased, and with a pathetic trembling of his thin upper
lip he commenced to beg with his mouth, and to put up his homely little hands in
mute appeal.
For a moment I feared he would go into convulsions, but I soon discovered that
my sympathy, had been wasted.
Then I noticed, for the first time, that there was a leather strap around his body
just in front of his back legs, and that a string was attached to it, which ran
through the railings and off the veranda. I looked over, and there, squatting on
his sandalled feet, was a Malay, with the other end of the string in his hand.
He arose, smiling, touched his forehead with the back of his brown palm, and
asked blandly:—
“Tuan, want to buy?”
The calm assurance of the man amused me.
“What, that miserable little monkey?” I said. “Do you take me for a tourist?
Look up in those trees and you will see monkeys that know boiled rice from
padi.”
The man grinned and showed his brilliantly red teeth and gums.