“Why?”
“Because there’s clay here,” said Edwin glibly.
“Where?”
“Oh! Round about.”
“White, like that?” exclaimed George eagerly, handling a teapot without a spout. He looked at Edwin: “Will you take me to see it? I should like to see white ground.”
“Well,” said Edwin, more cautiously, “the clay they get about here isn’t exactly white.”
“Then do they make it white?”
“As a matter of fact the white clay comes from a long way off—Cornwall, for instance.”
“Then why do they make the things here?” George persisted; with the annoying obstinacy of his years. He had turned the teapot upside down. “This was made here. It’s got ‘Bursley’ on it. Auntie Janet showed me.”
Edwin was caught. He saw himself punished for that intellectual sloth which leads adults to fob children off with any kind of a slipshod, dishonestly simplified explanation of phenomena whose adequate explanation presents difficulty. He remembered how nearly twenty years earlier he had puzzled over the same question and for a long time had not found the answer.