No amount of wishing on Barbara's part could do away with the necessity for her appearing in court, and the ordeal had to be gone through.  
"If I were a novelist, now," she said ruefully to Mademoiselle Thérèse, "I might be able to make some use of it, but as I am just a plain, ordinary person——"
 
Her chief consolation was that the boy had written saying he had joined his sister and that he "had never been so happy in his life." He was going to be a farmer, he said, and Barbara wondered why, of all occupations, he had fixed upon one that appeared to be so unsuitable; but, as a proof of his good intentions, poor boy, he had sent her ten shillings of the money she had lent him, and promised to forward the rest as soon as he could. It was some comfort also, as Mademoiselle Viré pointed out, that the man would be safely out of the way of doing further harm for the present.
 
Barbara quite agreed with her, but thought she would have felt the comfort more if some one else had played her part. But when the whole unpleasant business was over, and Barbara had vowed that nothing would ever prevail upon her to go into court again—even if it were to receive sentence herself—she sought out Mademoiselle Viré, with a proposal to do something to "take away the bad feeling."
 
"Make music," the little lady said. "That is, I think, the only thing I can offer you, my child. Music is very good for 'bad feelings.'"
 
"Yes, oh, yes, it is; but this is something I have been wanting for a long time, and now I feel it is the right time for it. Dear Mademoiselle Viré, will you come for a drive with me?"
 
A delicate flush coloured the old lady's cheeks, and Barbara watched her anxiously. She knew she was very poor, and could not afford to do such things for herself, and she was too frail to walk beyond the garden, but she also greatly feared that she might have made the offer in a way to hurt her friend's feelings.
 
The little lady did not answer for some time, then she looked into the eager face before her and smiled.
 
"If I said I would go, where could you get a carriage to take us?"
 
"Oh, I have found out all about that," the girl replied joyfully. "I shall not ask you to go in a donkey-cart, nor yet in a fiacre. I have found out quite a nice low chaise and a quiet pony that can be hired, and I will drive you myself."
 
It took only a little consideration after that, and then mademoiselle gave her consent to go next day if it were fine.
 
"If Jeannette would care to come," Barbara said, before leaving; and the old woman, who had been sitting very quietly in her corner while the arrangements were being made, looked at her mistress with a beaming face, and read her pleasure in the plan before she spoke.
 
"I am so glad you thought of her," Mademoiselle Viré whispered as she said good-bye to her visitor, "for though, of course, I should never have asked you to include her, yet she has been so patient and faithful in going through sorrows and labour with me, that it is but fair she should share my pleasures, and I should have felt grieved to leave her at home on such a day."
 
Barbara had one more invitation to give, which went rather against the grain, and that was to Mademoiselle Thérèse, whom she felt she could not leave out; but she was unfeignedly glad when the lady refused on the score of too much English correspondence.
 
The following d............