Although it was Whit-Sunday the altar was quite innocent of ornament, having only six candles, and a floral display of two bouquets. The seats and kneeling-benches were uncushioned, and the congregation was composed, as Bernard said, entirely of the working class; but the people were very clean and respectable in their appearance, and fervent in their devotions as only the Irish peasantry can be. The pastor, an intelligent young Irishman, apparently under thirty, had already said Mass at Pleasantville, six miles distant, and upon arriving at Mount Kisco he found that about twenty of his small congregation wished to receive Communion, as it was a festival; consequently, he spent the next hour not _literally_ in the confessional, for there was none, but in the tiny closet dignified by the name of a vestry. From thence, the door being open, we could with ease, had we had nothing better to do, have heard all of the priest's advice to his penitents. 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 _bete 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 Chatelaine_. 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 Chatelaine_, 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 introduced, a smart-looking young Irishman, whom the maids always find very beguiling; Lina, the autocrat of the kitchen, a little, wiry-looking woman from Stockholm, formerly cook, so _she_ says, to King Charles of Sweden; and Minna, the maid.