from the wonderful Angela Thirkell's
Summer Half, published in the UK in 1937:
Mrs. Twicker was a farmer's daughter from Westmorland, and...her housekeeping was that of the north, and it was her boast that her husband had never eaten baker's bread except for a week at the birth of their various children. Her kitchen with a huge open range, her little dairy with bowls of cream on stone shelves, her wash-house and copper, her mangle, were all the subject of enthusiastic praise [by her young visitors. When one of them broke their buttons by over-enthusiastically using the washing mangle,] to the kitchen [they returned]. From a chest of drawers Mrs. Twicker got a large basket, once lined with quilted blue satin, and full of all sorts of enchanting odds and ends,...among them a shell-box containing apparently one of each kind of button in the world. Mrs. Twicker, putting on a much-worn thimble with an agate top, sewed them on, while the boys looked at the dough that was rising in a big earthenware bowl before the fire, and the chicks that were being raised by hand in warm flannel in a basket, with a cat taking care of them. When Mrs. Twicker had finished the [button repair] she took the dough out of the bowl and shaped it into loaves for baking. Each visitor was allowed to prick his initials on the top of a loaf, and Mrs. Twicker promised them that each should have some of his own loaf next morning....It was at this point that Swan said he would like to live there forever.
