After breakfast the next morning, Arthur didn’t immediately start checking the house for anything else that needed fixing, as he usually did.
Instead, he closed the door and returned to the table.
Helena brought out the small coin pouch she’d found while sorting through their belongings a few days earlier.
It wasn’t very big.
The fabric was worn, and even the area around the drawstring had begun to fray.
They had found it not long after moving into the farmhouse, but at the time, the roof had been leaking, mice had gotten into the kitchen, and they hadn’t even known how long their food would last.
One problem had followed another, and none of them had been in the mood to sit down and figure out exactly what the money inside the pouch could buy.
Now that the most urgent problems had been dealt with, at least for the time being, it was finally time to take a proper look.
The three children quickly gathered around the table.
Lucas looked at the pouch in Helena’s hand.
“Is that all the money we have?”
Helena thought for a moment before answering.
“Everything we’ve found so far should be in here.”
“Should be?”
Lucas immediately caught that part.
Arthur glanced at him, amused.
“We don’t even know what used to be stored in this house.
Your mother saying ‘should be’ is already pretty careful.”
Lucas thought about it and had to admit his father had a point.
They had cleaned and sorted through most of the farmhouse over the past few days, but no one could guarantee that the original family hadn’t tucked a few coins away in some corner they hadn’t discovered yet.
For now, the only money they could be certain about was what they had in this pouch.
Clara had already brought over the paper and pen.
“Let’s count it first.
At least we’ll know how much is here.”
Helena nodded and loosened the drawstring.
She tipped the pouch over, and several coins of different sizes and colors rolled across the table.
One kept going until it reached Arthur’s hand, where he stopped it with his fingers.
All five of them looked down.
Then they went quiet.
Arthur stared at the coins for a long moment before suddenly realizing something very important.
“Does anyone know how this money works?”
No one answered.
Lucas picked up one of the coins, studied the front, then flipped it over and examined the back.
Nothing.
After a while, he put it back down.
Clara picked up another coin and studied it too, with exactly the same result.
Ever since arriving here, they had been able to communicate with people normally and could understand at least some of the writing they encountered.
But when it came to what these coins were called, how much each one was worth, or how the different types converted into one another—
They had no idea.
Theo stood beside the table watching for a while.
Then he reached out and pushed one coin that had rolled slightly away from the others back into place, lining it up neatly.
Arthur noticed.
“You know?”
Theo shook his head.
“No.”
“Then why did you move it?”
“It was crooked.”
Arthur fell silent.
Right.
He shouldn’t have asked.
Helena held back a laugh and began sorting the different coins by size and color.
“Forget what they’re worth for now.
Let’s at least count how many we have.”
That was the most practical thing they could do.
Lucas and Arthur counted while Clara recorded the numbers.
Helena continued sorting the remaining coins into separate groups.
Theo had originally intended to help too.
But just as he reached out, he suddenly stopped.
He stared at the coins for a few seconds, his little brows slowly drawing together.
One look at his expression was enough for Lucas to know exactly what he was thinking.
“You think the money’s dirty, don’t you?”
Theo didn’t deny it.
Lucas deliberately added, “You don’t even know how many people have touched those.”
Theo’s outstretched hand immediately pulled back.
Arthur almost laughed.
“You don’t have to count them.”
Theo nodded at once.
“Okay.”
There wasn’t even a second of hesitation.
In the end, the other four counted all the coins and separated them according to size and color.
Clara carefully wrote down how many of each kind they had.
When she finished, the family stared at the numbers again.
Lucas was the first to speak.
“So…
are we rich or poor?”
Arthur looked up at him.
“You’re asking me?”
“You’re Dad.”
“Dad doesn’t know either.”
Arthur’s answer was remarkably straightforward.
They didn’t know how much a sack of flour cost.
They didn’t know the price of salt.
Naturally, they had no way of knowing how long the coins on the table could support a family of five.
Clara looked down at the numbers she’d written and quickly realized the same thing.
“So knowing how many coins we have doesn’t really help.
We still need to know how much things cost.”
“Right.”
Helena gathered the coins together again.
“At the very least, we need to know the prices of the things people buy most often.”
Arthur didn’t answer immediately.
Yesterday, the man who knew the Bennett family had confirmed quite a few things for them.
They now knew that they really had just split from the larger household, and they knew that the old farmhouse and the overgrown land behind it were theirs to use.
They also knew there was a village nearby.
But they still had no idea where the town was.
If they wanted to understand local prices, the most straightforward solution was to go there and see for themselves.
Arthur soon made up his mind.
“We’ll go out again today.”
Lucas immediately looked up.
“Where?”
“Same road as yesterday, but we’ll go a little farther.”
Arthur picked up the coin pouch from the table.
“We’ll see if we can figure out which way the town is.
Once we know how far it is, we can decide when to actually go.”
Clara understood.
“So we’re not going all the way to town today?”
“Of course not.”
Arthur looked at the three children.
“We don’t even know where it is.
If I take the three of you out there and we walk for half a day without finding it, who do you think is going to be exhausted?”
Lucas almost said that he wouldn’t get tired.
Then he remembered how sore his legs had been on the way home yesterday.
The words reached his mouth and quietly disappeared.
Arthur looked at him in surprise.
“Not going to tell me you can walk today?”
Lucas kept a perfectly straight face.
“I’m conserving my energy.”
Clara laughed.
“We haven’t even left yet.”
“What’s wrong with preparing early?”
Arthur couldn’t be bothered to expose him and simply told Helena to put the money away.
They were only going out to learn the route today.
They weren’t planning to buy anything, so there was no reason to carry all the money they had.
Just before they left, Clara reached for the sheets of paper she’d been using for their notes.
Arthur immediately noticed.
“Planning to write while you walk?”
Clara looked down at the papers in her hand.
“Write it down when we get back.
Carrying those around will only be inconvenient.”
“But what if I forget?”
Arthur thought for a moment.
“Then all five of us can remember it.
Surely we won’t all forget the same thing.”
Clara considered that.
It made sense.
Only then did she put the papers back on the table.
Meanwhile, Theo was already standing at the doorway, carefully inspecting the ground outside.
There hadn’t been any heavy rain for several days, so the road was much drier than it had been the first time they’d gone exploring.
Theo studied it for a while.
Once he confirmed that there weren’t any obvious patches of mud, the serious expression on his face finally relaxed.
“Today is okay.”
Lucas, who was putting on his shoes, looked up.
“What’s okay?”
“The road.”
Lucas paused.
“You’re approving roads now?”
Theo didn’t see anything strange about that.
“There’s not as much mud today.”
Lucas stared at him for a moment and decided not to ask anything else.
If he kept going, Theo might actually start giving every road nearby a rating.
The family of five soon left the farmhouse.
After their previous trips, they no longer had to stop every few steps to check where they were going.
They remembered the fork in the road, the unusually noticeable tree beside it, and which parts of the path became narrower.
Arthur led them in the same direction they’d gone yesterday.
The farther they walked, the clearer the signs of regular travel became.
Besides the wagon tracks they’d noticed before, there were now fresh footprints on the road.
More houses could also be seen in the distance.
Helena looked ahead.
“This must be a road the villagers use often.”
Arthur nodded.
“Looks like it.”
He had barely finished speaking when they heard the sound of wooden wheels rolling over the road.
Everyone looked up.
A small wooden cart was slowly coming toward them, pulled by a brown horse.
Several sacks were piled in the back, and an older man sat at the front holding the reins.
Arthur instinctively led his family toward the side of the road to make room.
As the cart approached, the driver glanced at them.
Arthur waited.
The man didn’t call his name.
He didn’t show any sign of recognizing them either.
Arthur secretly relaxed.
Good.
A stranger was much easier.
At least this time, he could ask questions without worrying about not knowing who he was talking to.
When the cart drew level with them, Arthur called out.
“Excuse me.”
The older man pulled gently on the reins, slowing the horse.
“What is it?”
“Is this the way to town?”
The man glanced down the road and nodded.
“Yes.
Just keep following this road.”
Arthur finally felt a little more certain.
At least they’d been heading in the right direction.
“How far is it?”
“On foot?
Not too far.”
That answer was still rather vague.
Arthur looked down at the three three-year-olds beside him.
After a moment, he asked,
“What if we’re walking with children?”
Only then did the man take a proper look at them.
“That young?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you definitely won’t be moving very fast.”
The man seemed to estimate the distance before pointing ahead.
“At your pace, it’ll still take a while.
But the road’s easy enough.
Go through the village up ahead, then follow the main road south.
It’ll take you straight there.”
Arthur immediately committed those details to memory.
“We have to pass through the village?”
“Of course.”
The man pointed ahead again.
“Keep going a little farther and you’ll be there.”
The family followed the direction of his finger.
So the scattered houses they’d seen during their previous trips hadn’t actually meant they’d entered the village yet.
Arthur thought for a moment before asking another question.
“Is the town usually busy?”
“Of course.”
The man seemed to find the question perfectly ordinary.
“People need salt and flour, don’t they?
And plenty of folks bring things in to trade.
It’s even busier on market days.”
That was already more than enough information for them.
Now they knew not only which direction the town was in, but also that the villagers regularly went there to buy and trade things.
Arthur didn’t ask anything else.
“Thank you.”
“No trouble.”
The man flicked the reins lightly, and the horse began moving again.
The cart had only just started forward when the man seemed to remember something.
He looked back at the three children.
“If you’re really planning to take all three of them with you, leave early.
Kids that small are bound to get tired halfway there, and you can’t carry all three by yourself.”
Before Arthur could answer, the man had already driven on.
The three children remained standing there, each wearing a slightly different expression.
Lucas spoke first.
“I can walk by myself.”
Arthur looked down at him.
“He’s already gone.”
“I’m just making it clear.”
“Then you can prove it when we actually go.”
Lucas immediately stopped talking.
Clara was already organizing the information in her head.
“The town is south of here, and we have to pass through the village first.”
Helena nodded.
“The villagers probably go there often.”
“Yeah.”
Arthur watched the cart gradually disappear down the road.
“Salt, flour, things to trade…
When we go for the first time, we can check the prices of those.”
Lucas remembered the sacks in the back of the cart.
“Do you think that man was going to town too?”
“Maybe,” Arthur said.
“But we don’t know, so don’t guess.”
Lucas nodded and didn’t pursue it.
Clara looked farther down the road.
“Are we still going ahead?”
Arthur checked the sky, then looked at the children.
They hadn’t been out for very long, and none of the three seemed particularly tired yet.
The man had also said that the village wasn’t much farther ahead.
Since they’d already come this far, there was no harm in taking a look. This chapter was copied from novelping.com without permission.
“We’ll go a little farther and see where the village is.”
The family continued forward.
Sure enough, it didn’t take long for the surroundings to begin changing.
The houses that had once been scattered far apart gradually became more numerous.
More fences appeared beside the road, along with patches of cultivated land.
Farther ahead, smoke rose from several rooftops.
Every now and then, someone stepped out of a yard.
Others led livestock along smaller paths branching off the main road.
It was nothing like the villages they had known before.
There were no neat roads and no obvious entrance announcing that they’d arrived.
But with the number of houses and people around them, it was obvious that they’d reached a place where families lived close together.
Lucas looked around.
“This should be the village, right?”
Arthur didn’t answer immediately.
He studied the surroundings.
“Probably.”
This time, he had no intention of going any farther.
Their goal today had only been to find out which direction the town was in.
Now they knew it was to the south, and they had also located the village.
That was already more than they’d expected to learn.
More importantly, there were noticeably more people around now.
There was no telling how many of them knew the original Bennett family.
Yesterday, meeting just one familiar person had been enough to make all five of them nervous.
If Arthur walked straight into the village with Helena and the three children and they suddenly ran into several people who knew them—
He wasn’t sure they could handle that yet.
Arthur quickly made his decision.
“We’ll head back for today.”
Lucas looked surprised.
“We’re not going in?”
“No rush.”
Arthur turned around.
“We know how to get to town now.
The rest can wait until next time.”
None of the children objected.
On the way home, Clara kept going over everything they’d heard, afraid she’d forget something before she could write it down.
The moment they stepped inside the farmhouse, she went straight for her papers without even stopping for water.
Arthur watched her sit down at the table.
“Drink some water first.”
“I’m afraid I’ll forget.”
“You’re going to forget that the town is south?”
“That’s not the only thing.”
Clara had already started writing.
The town is to the south.
We have to pass through the village to get there.
After leaving the village, follow the main road.
The villagers go to town to buy salt and flour, and they also bring things there to trade.
She stopped.
“Anything else?”
Lucas was already sitting nearby to rest.
Without even thinking, he said,
“Everyone thinks we can’t walk all the way to town.”
Clara looked up.
“We don’t need to write that.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s useless.”
Lucas looked unconvinced.
“How is it useless?”
Clara thought seriously for a moment.
“Then I’ll write—Lucas insists he can walk all the way to town.”
Lucas immediately nodded.
“That’s fine.”
Arthur had just taken a sip of water and nearly choked.
“You’re actually letting her write that?”
Lucas looked completely serious.
“I can prove it later.”
“Prove what?”
“That I can walk there by myself.”
Arthur looked down at his son.
Lucas hadn’t complained once on the way home, but now that he was sitting down, his legs hadn’t moved much at all.
Arthur considered pointing that out.
In the end, he decided against it.
“Fine.
Prove it when we go.”
Theo had no interest in their argument.
After entering the house, he’d checked his shoes.
The road had dried considerably, so there was only some dust on the soles.
No obvious mud.
Theo was clearly pleased.
“That road is better today.”
Lucas turned toward him.
“Because there’s no mud?”
“Yeah.”
“So as long as there’s no mud, it’s a good road?”
Theo thought about it.
“And no puddles.”
Lucas was silent for two seconds.
“You have a lot of requirements.”
Theo seemed to think they were perfectly reasonable.
Clara finished writing down the last few pieces of information and finally put the pen aside.
Arthur sat at the table and went over everything they’d learned during the past two days.
They now knew that they’d recently split from the larger family, and they knew there was a village nearby.
Today, they’d also confirmed that the town was to the south and that it wasn’t nearly as far away as they’d first feared.
At least it wasn’t somewhere that would take an entire day of walking just to reach.
That meant they would soon be able to find out what things here were actually worth.
Arthur lowered his eyes toward the coin pouch on the table.
They had counted every coin inside.
But they still had no idea how long that money could support a family of five.
If they wanted an answer, sooner or later they would have to visit the town themselves.
“We’ll prepare tomorrow,” Arthur suddenly said.
Helena immediately understood.
“For the trip to town?”
“Yeah.”
Arthur nodded.
“If the weather stays good, we’ll go the day after tomorrow.”
Lucas, who had been leaning back in his chair to rest, immediately sat up straight.
Clara looked up too.
Theo was the only one who turned toward the window first.
He stared at the road outside for a moment before asking,
“Is the road in town muddy?”
The room went quiet.
Arthur looked at him.
“I don’t know.”
Theo’s little face immediately became serious.
Arthur had no choice but to add,
“But that man said the main road is easy to walk on.
It probably won’t be as bad as the road around our house.”
Only then did Theo relax slightly.
Lucas leaned back in his chair and looked at his brother.
“When we go to town, are you going there to look at things or inspect the roads?”
Theo answered naturally.
“Both.”
Lucas had nothing left to say.
Arthur, however, was already thinking about a much more practical problem.
If all five of them really went to town the day after tomorrow, they would definitely need to leave early.
As for whether three three-year-olds could make the entire round trip on their own two little legs—
There was probably only one way to find out.