A favourite evening snack before bedtime was bread and milk home-made bread, buttered and sugared, over which we poured milk fresh from the farm. Once when I followed this with an inordinate number of ripe cherries I awoke in the night with the most fearsome stomach-ache I can remember. It pains me now just to think about it!

My brother and I used to take turns going for the milk to Mrs. Gill's up in the village. Captain Gill, who had sailed the Great Lakes in younger days, was much older than his wife. A patriarchal figure with a long grey beard stained with tobacco juice, he sat on the back verandah, wrinkled, frail and taciturn. But Mrs. Gill was a great talker, and even if we wanted to get back quickly to watch a ball game in the park we had to hear her out first. We liked going into the creamery, a cool cellar where she kept the milk in large dishpans and would skim the cream off when we wanted it in thick clots. The smell of this creamery with the pans of milk, fresh-churned butter and buttermilk is a fragrant memory.