164 
INQUISITIVENESS, 
our inner apartment must not be entered ; at 
the very first we would call out wamingly when 
any of them seemed about to venture in, and I 
believe not one of them ever saw the interior. 
During the weeks I was prostrate they were 
quite annoyed, the post-holder said, that we 
stayed so much indoors, and some of them stood 
constantly by the window, which was too high, 
however, for them to see in readily. Growing 
impatient, they would call, “ Non ! non 1 nouy ! 
Tuan! tuan! tuany!” 1 the diminutive being 
uttered in a most pleading and cajoling tone. 
Having seen that H. wanted to buy objects of 
ethnographical interest, they brought all sorts of 
things, and held them up at the window. There 
was no article in their possession, from a garment 
to their own teeth, from their looms to their 
necklaces, that was not persistently pressed upon 
us ; and it having got abroad that II, wanted 
skulls, they imagined that skulls and bones of 
any kind would be equally acceptable, and 
gathered from the refuse-heaps near the village 
all they could find, offering them with such a 
clamour that I was quite irritated in my weak- 
ness. 
1 Tuan is “ master ” ; nonya (or nony t as they said it) is “ mis- 
tress " or u lady.” 
