In no place short of a mansion was much furniture to be found. And to say that Mrs. Edwards had a well-scrubbed dresser filled with wooden platters and with mugs of Staffordshire pottery; that she had not only a large oaken table, but a linen cloth to cover it on occasion, and that there was a chair near the chimney corner in addition to the high-backed bench, or settle, and the three-legged stools; that a spinning-wheel stood between the two bedroom doors opposite to the fireplace, and that a large oaken chest stood under one window containing the family stock of clothing, and of flannel the wheel had helped to spin, was to say that she was for her time and place a thrifty, well-to-do woman, somewhat in advance of her class.
However, the great feature of the kitchen was the expansive open fireplace, where the fire was made on a broad hearthstone, slightly raised, the inside of the chimney, which sloped upwards towards the top like a narrowing funnel, being set with stone seats for the elders of the family.
On the Tuesday following the catastrophe which had made Mrs. Edwards a widow--although all the morning there had been the trampling through of coroner and jurymen--a fierce fire of peat and fire-balls filled the whole of the hearth, and two huge iron pots like witches' cauldrons hung suspended by chains above it, bubbling and steaming. At the same time, in the large oven built into the wall on the right of the fireplace, she and her helpers had been baking spiced cake and oaten bread the whole of the morning, as if providing for a regiment of soldiers.
It was a hot day and hot work, though casements and doors stood open to let out the vaporous fumes of cookery; and had not neighbourly Mrs. Griffith come with her young daughter Cate to the assistance of Ales and her troubled mistress, the former would have been unable to relieve Rhys of his voluntary but fatiguing duty at the remorseless churn, so great, if not unusual, were the preparations for the guests expected on the morrow.
Indeed, as Mrs. Edwards said, she did not know what she could possibly have done without Owen Griffith and his wife, they had been such zealous friends to her in her great affliction.
She was not aware how the man's tender conscience stung him for leaving Edwards to return home alone from Llantrissant. He was feeling himself in some sort responsible for her bereavement. At any rate, no brother could have served her in better stead had a brother been at hand.