Doomsday by Warwick Deeping

At eight o'clock on a moonlit March night a young woman went out with a jug in quest of milk. For Ransford, the Carslake doctor, expected all day, had not arrived at "Green Shutters" till seven o'clock, and had shown himself a little testy, as an overworked man will. Two old people in bed and coughing in chorus and both with temperatures, and why hadn't Mary sent for him before? As though doctor's bills were to be incurred with frivolous recklessness! Ransford had warmed his hands and ordered milk, meat essence, junket. He had promised to send down some medicine by a boy on a bicycle.

Hence Mary's quest for milk, for in the larder she had found just enough to cover a lump of sugar in the bottom of a breakfast cup. She knew that she had only to knock at the green door of the "Oast" in order to command immediate devotion, but she did not knock at poor Coode's door. She tried the Perrivales, to be met by Phyllis' red head--and a "So sorry, but I don't think we have got a drop. Dad had the last in his coffee." She hesitated outside the Brownlows, and then went on down the cinder track and out into the road. She would find milk at "Doomsday," and she faced the full moon and saw it hanging like a round shield behind the trunk of one of the Six Firs. There was not a cloud in the sky. She looked up at the zenith, though the stars were dim because of the moonlight, and the Milky Way--invisible--trailed symbolically above her head.