lady had said on
Barbara's last visit.

"We are of different faiths, _mon amie_, but you will not mind if I put
up a prayer for you sometimes. It can do you no harm, and if we do not
meet here again, perhaps the good God will let us make music together
up yonder."

Miss Britton fixed the day of departure as soon as Barbara was ready
for the journey, proposing to go home in easy stages by Rouen and
Dieppe, so that they might see the churches of which Mr. Morton had
talked so much. The uncle and nephew had just come from that town, and
were now returning to Paris, and thence, Denys thought, to England.

Mademoiselle Therese was "desolated" to hear that Barbara's visit was
really drawing to a close, and assured her aunt that a few more months
would make Barbara a "perfect speaker; for I have never known one of
your nation of such talent in our language," she declared.

"Of course that isn't true," Miss Britton said coolly to Barbara
afterwards, "though I think you have been diligent, and both
Mademoiselle Vire and the queer little man next door say you speak
fairly well."

The "queer little man next door" asked them both in to supper before
they went, to show Miss Britton, he said, what a Frenchman could do in
the cooking line. Barbara had some little difficulty in persuading her
aunt to go, though she relented at last, and the experience was
certainly very funny, though pathetic enough too. He and his sons
could talk very little English, and again Barbara had to play
interpreter, or correct the mistakes they made in English, which was
equally difficult.

They had decorated the table gaily, and the father and son both looked
so hot, that Barbara was sure they had spent a long time over the
cooking. The first item was a soup which the widower had often spoken
of as being made better by himself than by many a _chef_, and consisted
of what seemed to Barbara a kind of beef-tea with pieces of bread
floating in it. But on this occasion the bread seemed to have swelled
to tremendous proportions, and absorbed the soup so that there was
hardly anything but what seemed damp, swollen rolls! Aunt Anne,
Barbara declared afterwards, was magnificent, and plodded her way
through bread sponges flavoured with soup, assuring the distressed cook
that it was really quite remarkable "potage," and that she had never
tasted anything like it before--all of which, of course, was perfectly
true.

The chicken, which came next, was c