Doomsday by Warwick Deeping

Arnold Furze was up at half-past four. He came down in his shirt and breeches to light the stove for an early cup of tea, and he saw the sunrise through the kitchen window, a great yellow circle hanging between the gnarled black trunks of two old apple trees. Another fine day. He stood and looked at the new sink over which Mary's hands had drooped, and the lover in him had a seriousness that did not remember to smile over the fact that a glazed sink could be a vessel of romance. Soon, water would gush into it from new brass taps, hot water and cold water. There was the new grate too to be christened. She should come and try it; there should be a Viner party, and a baking of cakes.

When he went to the garden door and opened it, everything was wet with dew. White mist lay in the valley, and he could smell the hay, and the smell of it was tangled up in the darkness of a girl's hair. But that mist meant fine weather, and a blazing surf, and the swathes crisped by it and ready for getting in. It would be a busy day, but in the cool of the evening his beloved would steal down to him.