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.

"I'll tell you how it is," he said, determined to be conscientious.
"It's like this--" He had to pause. Queer, how hard it was to state the
thing coherently! "It's like this. In the old days they used to make
crocks anyhow, very rough, out of any old clay. And crocks were first
made here because the people found common yellow clay, and the coal to
burn it with, lying close together in the ground. You see how handy it
was for them."

"Then the old crocks were yellow?"

"More or less. Then people got more particular, you see, and when white
clay was found somewhere else they had it brought here, because
everybody was used to making crocks here, and they had all the works and
the tools they wanted, and the coal too. Very important, the coal!
Much easier to bring the clay to the people and the works, than cart off
all the people--and their families, don't forget--and so on, to the
clay, and build fresh works into the bargain... That's why. Now are
you sure you see?"

George ignored the question. "I suppose they used up all the yellow
clay there was here, long ago?"

"Not much!" said Edwin. "And they never will! You don't know what a
sagger is, I reckon?"

"What is a sagger?"

"Well, I can't stop to tell you all that now. But I will some time.
They make saggers out of the yellow clay."

"Will you show me the yellow clay?"

"Yes, and some saggers too."

"When?"

"I don't know. As soon as I can."

"Will you to-morrow?"

To-morrow happened to be Thursday. It was not Edwin's free afternoon,
but it was an afternoon to which a sort of licence attached. He yielded
to the ruthless egotism of the child.

"All right!" he said.

"You won't forget?"

"You can rely on me. Ask your auntie if you may go, and if she says you
may, be ready for me to pull you up over the wall here, about three
o'clock."

"Auntie will have to let me go," said George, in a savage tone, as Edwin
helped him to slip down into the garden of the Orgreaves. Edwin went
off to business with a singular consciousness of virtue, and with pride
in his successful manner o