But one evening of the week before, Mme. Rosemilly, who had been dining with them, remarked, “It must be great fun to go out fishing.”  The jeweller, flattered by her interest and suddenly fired with the wish to share his favourite sport with her, and to make a convert after the manner of priests, exclaimed:  “Would you like to come?”

“To be sure I should.”

“Next Tuesday?”

“Yes, next Tuesday.”

“Are you the woman to be ready to start at five in the morning?”

She exclaimed in horror: 

“No, indeed:  that is too much.”

He was disappointed and chilled, suddenly doubting her true vocation. 
However, he said: 

“At what hour can you be ready?”

“Well—­at nine?”

“Not before?”

“No, not before.  Even that is very early.”

The old fellow hesitated; he certainly would catch nothing, for when the sun has warmed the sea the fish bite no more; but the two brothers had eagerly pressed the scheme, and organized and arranged everything there and then.

So on the following Tuesday the Pearl had dropped anchor under the white rocks of Cape la Heve; they had fished till midday, then they had slept awhile, and then fished again without catching anything; and then it was that father Roland, perceiving, rather late, that all that Mme. Rosemilly really enjoyed and cared for was the sail on the sea, and seeing that his lines hung motionless, had uttered in a spirit of unreasonable annoyance, that vehement “Tschah!” which applied as much to the pathetic widow as to the creatures he could not catch.

Now he contemplated the spoil—­his fish—­with the joyful thrill of a miser; seeing as he looked up at the sky that the sun was getting low:  “Well, boys,” said he, “suppose we turn homeward.”

The young men hauled in their lines, coiled them up, cleaned the hooks and stuck them into corks, and sat waiting.

Roland stood up to look out like a captain.

“No wind,” said he.  “You will have to pull, young ’uns.”

And suddenly extending one arm to the northward, he exclaimed: 

“Here comes the packet from Southampton.”

Away over the level sea, spread out like a blue sheet, vast and sheeny and shot with flame and gold, an inky cloud was visible against the rosy sky in the quarter to which he pointed, and below it they could make out the hull of the steamer, which looked tiny at such a distance.  And to southward other wreaths of smoke, numbers of them, could be seen, all converging towards the Havre pier, now scarcely visible as a white streak with the lighthouse, upright, like a horn, at the end of it.

Roland asked:  “Is not the Normandie due to-day?” And Jean replied: 

“Yes, to-day.”

“Give me my glass.  I fancy I see her out there.”

The father pulled out the copper tube, adjusted it to his eye, sought the speck, and then, delighted to have seen it, exclaimed: