From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
Today after school, Alma took me to call on her friend Lizzie. Lizzie’s real name is Elizabeth and she is a very nice lady. She keeps house for two priests, Father Dennis and Father Patrick. They live in a yellow, brick house next to their yellow brick church. The house isn’t pretty inside, just very bare but there is a very lovely garden right in the back of it and that is where we always sit when we go there. Lots of nuns come to see Lizzie. I just love nuns. They are much sweeter and quieter than the people who come to our house. When you sit with them, you just want to close your eyes and sleep. They look like the pictures of penguins in my animal book and they have soft voices. One of them is called sister Appolonia. She helped me pick daisies and taught me to make a daisy chain but the daisies died before I finished and that made me sad, as if I killed them. They looked so much prettier growing in the grass. Alma always goes into the kitchen to help Lizzie. She says that the housekeepers of priests must work very hard, much harder than in other places, but it’s a great honor to serve such good men. Lizzie doesn’t mind as she is serving God by helping those who represent Him on earth, even if she has to get up at four in the morning and make breakfast for the Fathers. They eat an awful lot, besides they have a lot of company, other priests from other cities come to visit. I said that I thought four in the morning was a funny time to be having company but Alma says it isn’t party company, it’s because they have to say their prayers very early. I never see the priests. They are too busy in the Church being holy.
I wonder whether Lizzie worked for priests at Sacred Heart Church, which, at Fell and Fillmore, was less than a mile from where Hilda lived.
