[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.
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.
[Figure 5. Tin Kitchen or Roaster]
