Riches had been discovered under the earth, so Anthony explained to him. Before this great discovery the people of the valley had lived in little cottages—just peasants, tilling their small farms, tending their flocks. A few hundred pounds would have bought them all up. Now it was calculated that the winding Wyndbeck flowed through the richest valley in all England.
“What are riches?” asked the child. “What do they do?”
Riches, his father explained to him, were what made people well off and happy.
“I see,” said John. But he evidently did not, as his next question proved conclusively.
“Then are all the people happy who live here now?” he asked. They had passed about a score of them during the short time they had walked in silence. “Why don’t they look it?”
It had to be further explained to John that the riches of the valley did not belong to the people who lived and died in the valley, who dug the coal and iron or otherwise handled it. To be quite frank, these sad-eyed men and women who now dwelt beside the foul black Wyndbeck were perhaps worse off than their forbears who had dwelt here when the Wyndbeck flowed through sunlit fields and shady woods, undreaming of the hidden wealth that lay beneath their careless feet. But to a few who lived in fine houses, more or less far away, in distant cities, in pleasant country places. It was these few who had been made well off and happy by the riches of the valley. The workers of the valley did not even know the names of these scattered masters of theirs.
He had not meant to put it this way. But little John had continually chipped in with those direct questions that a child will persist in asking. And, after all, it was the truth.
Besides, as he went on to explain still further to little John, they were not all unhappy, these dirty, grimy, dull-eyed men and women in their ugly clothes living in ugly houses in long ugly streets under a sky that rained soot. Some of them earned high wages—had, considering their needs, money to burn, as the saying was.
“I see,” said John again. It was an irritating habit of his, to preface awkward questions with, I see. “Then does having money make everybody happy?”
It was on the tip of Anthony’s tongue. He was just about to snap it out. Little John mustn’t worry his little head about things little Jacks can’t be expected to understand. Little boys must wait till they are grown-up, when the answer to all these seemingly difficult questions will be plain to them. But as he opened his lips to speak there sprang from the muddy pavement in front of him a little impish lad dressed in an old pair of his father’s trousers, cut down to fit him, so that the baggy part instead of being about the knee was round his ankles—a little puzzled lad who in his day had likewise plagued poor grown-up folk with questions it might have been the better for them had they tried to answer.