Extract from Chapter Three:
After a good night started with Sister M Collette in a nice buggy drawn by Jack, Mr Hanrahan’s servant- visited a number of places- and begged a lot of fowls and geese to bring home with me for Xmas. Jack quite enthusiastic and doing a good part of the begging. Great fun on getting back to the convent when Sister M Gabrielle came to take a bundle from me, and first hearing a hiss, found her sleeve pulled by something which turned out to be a goose and which she nearly let fall in her terror. (Mary MacKillop’s Diary 20 December 1884)
One can almost hear Mary’s hearty chuckle at poor sister Gabrielle’s distress! She did enjoy a joke. So on the next day, she was taken driving again by the trusty Jack as she reports that
In the afternoon Jack had taken us for another drive and brought home a turkey, geese, chickens and a sucking pig, which I begged for the fun of taking it home with me and shocking our dear Sister M Patrick, also a lame rosella parrot for Uncle. (Mary MacKillop’s Diary 22 December 1884)
She was already anticipating the fun she would have with poor sister Patrick. Who was going to get poor piggy ready for the Christmas Dinner?
Bernadette O’Sullivan sj, ATF Press Publishing 2018
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