My 8-year-old son gave up his lunch money to buy a little girl with Down syndrome a red dress—the next morning, our lawn was covered with lunchboxes, but what was inside the biggest one made him go pale.

And he didn’t move.

Four or five seconds. He just stayed there on his knees looking into it.

Then he sat back on his heels and his face went completely white and he said, “Mum.”

I came down the steps.

He got up and moved backward away from it, and he was shaking, and he said:

“Call the police.”

And I looked in and my legs went.

There was money in it.

Cash, in a green vinyl bank bag with the zip open, and the bag was full, and there were bands round the notes — those paper bands with the amount printed on them — and there were a lot of bands.

And on top of it, folded once, was a note.

My son is eight. He has seen a hundred dollars in his life.

What he saw at half past six in the morning on his own lawn was a battered steel box with a bank bag in it stuffed with banded cash, and there is exactly one thing that means to an eight-year-old, and it is not generosity.