A sea captain must depart in haste from the inn where he had eaten a meal of four fried eggs. He returns six years later to pay his debt and discovers that the innkeeper's menu has gone up considerably--500 gold pieces, he demands! But a clever lawyer finds a way around the innkeeper's avarice. As The Bulletin of the Center of Children's Books said of this book, also published by Pantheon in 1971, "The style of the retelling is excellent (and) the illustrations have vigor and humor."