This ceremony over, the young Father came out in his black cassock, and
taking up his vestments which lay upon the altar-steps, he proceeded
with the utmost nonchalance to put them on, not hesitating to display a
long rent in his surplice, and a decidedly ragged sleeve.

The Mass was a Low one, and the congregation were too poor to have an
organ or organist. Quite a contrast to a Sunday at St. Stephen's or
St. Francis Xavier's, but the _Mass_ is always the same, however humble
the surroundings.


_June 3_.

We are unusually fortunate, I think, in our domestic surroundings.
Servants are proverbially the _bête noire_ of American ladies, and the
prospect of having to train some unskilled specimens of foreign
peasantry weighed heavily, I fancy, upon our beautiful Ida in her new
responsibility of a young _Dame Châtelaine_. However, we have been, as
I said, singularly successful in obtaining servants.

To my great delight, there is not one ugly name in our little
household, although composed of eight members, commencing with _Queen_
Esther as mamma has been named; then we four girls--_la Dame
Châtelaine_, with her fair face, dark, pensive eyes, and modest
dignity; Gabrielle, or _Tourbillon_, our brilliant pet, and the
youngest of our quartette, although her graceful figure rises above the
rest of us; my sister Marguerite, _la Gentille Demoiselle_; and I,
Cecilia.

Then come the household retinue: Bernard, the coachman, already