"'A few whitings. Will you come, and eat some with us?'
"Eloi made no answer; but when the lines and fish had been taken out of the boat, and the boat had been washed and hauled up upon the shore, he followed the three fishers to their home. Pélagie also felt uneasy at sight of Eloi; she asked him, as Tranquille had done, if he would eat a whiting, to which he replied,—
"'Not to refuse you.'
"Then, as they changed the fish from one basket to another, he took up two, and kept them a long time in his hands, repeating, 'Fine whitings these, very fine whitings!' until Pélagie said:—
"'You shall take them home with you, cousin.'
"Eloi answered nothing; they sat down to dinner; he found the cider not very good, which did not prevent his drinking a great deal of it.
"'Well, Tranquille,' said he, at last, 'it is to-day you are to pay me the hundred and twenty crowns I lent you.'
"Neither the intrepid Risquetout, nor any of his family, dared to observe that the loan was not of one hundred and twenty crowns, but only of one hundred crowns, for which a hundred and twenty were to be paid back.
"'True,' said Tranquille Alain, 'true; but the same reason which prevented my paying you the other day, prevents me to-day; to-day only have we been able to put to sea.
"'I am sadly inconvenienced for these hundred and twenty crowns I lent you, cousin. I had reckoned on them to employ in an affair—I had taken them from a sum I had in reserve—and here I am, distressed for want of them.'