“Hadn’t ye thought of it afore?” asked Billy, his lazy eyes as full of laughter as a moorland pool when April breezes sport across it. “Knew it myself the first day I clapped een on Reuben Gaunt Te-he! Ye’re fearful wise and terrible hard in the head-piece, misters, but ’tis soft Billy has to guide ye time and time.”
“We’ll give you credit for it too,” muttered the grey old man.
“Never had money myself—not to speak of,” he said, with a tranquil chuckle. “Spoils folk’s lives and bothers ’em, does money, so I’ve heard tell. Cannot lie under a hedgerow on June nights and hear the birds a-twittering them to sleep. Must be prisoned in a great big bed, must folks wi’ money, and have a great big roof sitting down on them. Not for Billy the Fool, thank ye, that sort o’ smothered life! But there’s summat else, misters. Ye who’ve got money, like, might do a service to Garth village.”
“Ay, and how, if a body might ask?” said a kindly farmer.
“Well now, ye might take your shovels and a big sack, each of ye, and ye might spade your money into ’t sack.”
A friendly smile passed from one to another of the farmers. Billy the Dreamer had stepped in front of Billy the Wise Fool, and they waited for a jest. There was a fine, free suggestion of untold wealth about the lad’s talk of a shovel and a sack that appealed to their humour. For they had tended, all of them, the niggard fields.
“Then ye’d bring your sacks o’ gold,” went on the natural—his face was so solemn and so sly that none could guess whether or not he knew that he was jesting—“and ye’d pour your gold out right along the roadway here, and Reuben Gaunt would never see that the daffy-down-dillies were fuller of sunshine than the gold that strewed Garth Street.”
“To be sure he wouldn’t,” said the grey old man. His tone suggested the quietness of a man who sees a moorland trout spreading dark fins in a pool, and moves warily to tickle him out on to the bank.
“Ye see,” went on Billy, with his inscrutable, large air, “ye see, ye might put it to him this way. ‘Reuben Gaunt,’ ye’d say—or ‘Mister Reuben Gaunt,’ seeing he owns land—‘silly boy Gaunt,’ ye’d say, ‘just look ye at all this shovelled gold that lines Garth Street.’ And he’d answer, ‘What o’ that?’ And ye’d answer back, ‘Silly boy Gaunt,’ ye’d say, ‘there’s a line of gold from here to Elm Tree Inn. ’Tis yours for asking,’ ye’d say, ‘granted ye do one thing. Oh, ay, ’tis yours for sure, granted ye do one thing.’”
“And what’s that one thing, Billy?” rapped out the grey-haired farmer.