A Pixy in Petticoats by John Trevena

It was not often that Mrs. Cobbledick had an idea, but when one did come she made the most of it. The idea of her life was butter, not that made by others -- she had repeatedly refused to grease her boots with that -- but her own. It would be impossible to lay too much emphasis upon the butter. The produce of her churn was in Mrs. Cobbledick's eyes the final triumph of art. It was not butter as other people, fools mostly, understood by the word. On Saturdays she drove her pony to great-market or little-market, as the case might be, with a basket of her precious butter. Sometimes she brought it back untouched. She said the townsfolk were not worthy of her butter. They did not understand it. They had not been educated up to it. Therefore she had refused to sell any to them. She had chosen rather to give it away to the suffering poor. It was not always that the suffering poor would accept the gift. They said it was bad butter.

Enthusiasm hardly entered into Willum's unemployed existence. Profound meditation with his back against a wall, the rise or fall in price of liquors containing alcohol, the breeding of spaniels, the courting of various young women, assorted ecclesiastical duties, an inquiry into the study of the Chinese language, the shooting of rabbits -- such were the occupations which filled the scholar's days. Yet even Willum felt pride in his mother's butter, believing it was all that she claimed for it. The glory of that butter was reflected upon him as the son of its creator. When escorting visitors through the village he would dismiss Norman architecture and Saxon pounds with a few ill-chosen inaccuracies in order that he might indicate the linhay, which Mrs. Cobbledick used for her dairy, with the impressive statement, "Mother makes her butter there."