“Pray tell thy mother, Sam, that the candles she helped us to make last fall are lasting well. We have treasured the choice green bayberry candles. Your mother will remember the day she helped me pick the bayberries for them. Now we do not need so much candle light, as the days grow longer. Thank her kindly for the bowl of rich soup she sent Daughter Andrews. Daughter will soon be up and about. Our new babe is six days old and strong and lusty. Hear how he cries.” [Illustration: Figure 3. Porringer or Shallow Bowl] Sam grinned and bore off his coals fallen from the burning sticks; while Grandmother took the bowl of porridge in to her daughter. [Illustration: Figure 4. Cast-Iron Skillet] Drawing the settles up to the table Mary Jane placed her father’s chair at one end and her mother’s at the other for Grandmother. Abigail and Dorothy seized the small brothers and sisters and scrubbed them clean. Whereupon the children took their porringers and wooden bowls from the dresser and stood in their places behind the settles. Abigail strained into a pail the warm, frothy milk which John, the oldest brother, had brought in, and Dorothy filled the large pewter tankard with cool milk from the cellar way. Mary Jane bustled about. She dished up from the steaming kettle on the hearth the corn meal mush, or hasty pudding, and added a large, thin Johnny cake, which she had browned in the skillet. The children folded their hands and bowed their heads. Grandmother had returned to the table. Father leaned over the high back of his chair and asked the Heavenly Father’s blessing on home and family and sought guidance in the tasks of the day. [Illustration: Figure 5. Tin Kitchen or Roaster] [Illustration: Figure 6. Plate-Warmer] Mary Jane admired her father more than anyone else in the world. Wasn’t he always right? She wondered. This morning while she sat with bowed head she asked herself, wistfully, if her father ever found it hard to decide between pleasure and duty. What would he say if he knew how much she wanted to see Jenny Lewis’s new clothes? Would he think her frivolous? As she raised her eyes, she found her father looking quietly at her. Somehow, she seemed to feel as if he understood her better than she did herself and she sat up straight and proud because he was her father. She felt certain that he would choose his duty however hard he found it.