“Now, look here,” said Tom. “We’ve got to get to grips with this. If you want everything thought out for you and to be told what to think and do, give your conscience to some priest to keep; go over to Rome. You couldn’t do better. It’ll be a rest for you, I don’t deny, for you’ve had your problems, as many and hard as most men; but if, as a reasoning being, you prefer to accept full responsibility for your own soul, you are going the wrong road—you are, indeed!” Then Mr. Mostyn said something about peace, and Tom retorted, “Peace in exchange for liberty!” and Laura heard, or understood, no more.

“Another good man gone over to the old enchantress,” he said, as the door closed behind his friend; and Laura, who was by that time nearly fourteen, asked, “Do you think it wrong to be a Catholic, Uncle?”

It was some time before he answered. She thought he had forgotten her presence and had been talking to himself. But, after he had polished his spectacles and taken up his work, he answered, “Wrong? No, not for those born to it or suited to it. I’ve known some good Catholics in my time; some the religion suited like the glove the hand. It was a good thing for them, but it won’t be for him. He’s been over a year thinking it out and studying books about it, and if you have to spend a year worrying and arguing yourself into a thing, that thing’s against your nature. If he’d been cut out for a Catholic, he’d have just sunk down into it months ago, as easy as falling into a feather bed, and not had to lash and worry himself and read his eyes out. But, for all that, I’ve been a fool to try to influence him, trying to influence him against being influenced. Never try to influence anybody, Laura. It’s a mistake. Other people’s lives are their own and they’ve got to live them, and often when we think they are doing wrong they are doing right— right for them, although it might not be right for us. Come, get that book and see how Lucy Snowe’s getting on with her Frenchman, and I’ll stick to my last, as every good shoemaker should do, and not go airing my opinions again—until the next time.”

Once a commercial traveller called at the workshop to have a stitch or two put in the shoes he was wearing. He was a stranger to Laura; but not to her uncle, for one of the first questions he asked was, “How is your wife?”

“Lazier and more contrary than ever,” was the unconventional reply.