official’s soup and spattered it all over his white expanse of shirt front. We all
looked up at the punkah. At the same instant a big, soft mango smashed in the
high official’s face and changed its ruddy red color to a sickly yellow.
The women screamed, and the men jumped up from the table. Then began a
regular fusillade of wine glasses and tropical fruits.
Sometimes they hit the high official from next door, at whom they all seemed to
be aimed, but more often they fell upon the table, among the glass and dishes. In
a moment everything was in wild confusion, and the mistress’s beautifully
decorated table looked as though a bomb had exploded on it.
The Chinese “boys” made a rush for the end of the room, and there, up on the
sideboard, among the glass, pelting his enemy, the high official, as fast as he
could throw, was Lepas.
A finger bowl struck the butler full in the face, and gave the monkey time to
make his escape out into the darkness through the wide-open doors.
We saw nothing more of Lepas for a week or more; we had, indeed, about given
him up, wondering as to his whereabouts, when one afternoon, as I was taking
my usual post-tiffin siesta on the cool side of the great, wide-spreading veranda,
I heard a timid whistle, and looked up to see Lepas seated on the railing, as sad
and humble as any truant schoolboy.
His hair was matted and faded and his face was dirty. His form had lost some of
the plumpness that had come to it with good living, but there was the same
wicked twinkle in his eyes, and the same hypocritical deceit in his bearing as of
old.
I reached out my hand to take him, but he hopped a few feet away and began to
beg with his teeth.
“Lepas,” I said, “you have a bad heart. I wash my hands of you. When Hamat
comes back you can go to him and be an ordinary, low caste monkey. Now go! I
never want to see you again!”
Lepas puckered up his lips and whistled mournfully for a few moments, but
seeing no sign of forgiveness in my face he jumped down and began to turn