“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. “No, John,” he answered. “It doesn’t make them happy. I wonder myself sometimes what’s the good of it. How can they be happy even if they do earn big money, a few of them. The hideousness, the vileness that is all around them. What else can it breed but a sordid joyless race. They spend their money on things stupid and gross. What else can you expect of them. You bring a child up in the gutter and he learns to play with mud, and likes it.” They were walking where the streets crept up the hillside. Over a waste space where dust and ashes lay they could see far east and west. The man halted and flung out his arms. “The Valley of the Wyndbeck. So they call it on the map. It ought to be the gutter of the Wyndbeck. One long, foul, reeking gutter where men and women walk in darkness and the children play with dirt.” He had forgotten John. The child slipped a hand into his. “Won’t the fields ever come back?” he asked. Anthony shook his head. “They’ll never come back,” he said. “Nothing to do for it, John, but to make the best of things as they are. It will always be a gutter with mud underneath and smoke overhead, and poison in its air. We must make it as comfortable a gutter as the laws of supply and demand will permit. At least we can give them rainproof roofs and sound floors and scientific drainage, and baths where they can wash the everlasting dirt out of their pores before it becomes a part of their skin.” From where they were they could see the new model dwellings towering high above the maze of roofs around them. “We’ll build them a theatre, John. They shall have poetry and music. We’ll plan them recreation grounds where the children can run and play. We’ll have a picture gallery and a big bright hall where they can dance.” He broke off suddenly. “Oh, Lord, as if it hadn’t all been tried,” he groaned. “Two thousand years ago, they thought it might save Rome. Bread and circuses, that is not going to save the world.”