Hector, a little puzzled, "I don't see how it can well
be anybody's business but God's, for I'm sure no one else can lay a hand
to it."

"And what's your business, Hector?" asked Willie, in a half-absent mood.

Some readers may perhaps think this a stupid question, and perhaps so
it was; but Willie was not therefore stupid. People sometimes _appear_
stupid because they have more things to think about than they can well
manage; while those who think only about one or two things may, on the
contrary, _appear_ clever when just those one or two things happen to be
talked about.

"What is my business, Willie? Why, to keep people out of the dirt, of
course."

"How?" asked Willie again.

"By making and mending their shoes. Mr Dick, now, when he goes out to
look at the stars through his telescope, might get his death of cold if
his shoemaker did not know his business. Of the general business, it's a
part God keeps to Himself to see that the stars go all right, and that
the sun rises and sets at the proper times. For the time's not the same
any two mornings running, you see, and he might make a mistake if he
wasn't looked after, and that would be serious. But I told you I don't
understand about astronomy, because it's not my business. I'm set to
keep folk's feet off the cold and wet earth, and stones and broken
glass; for however much a man may be an astronomer and look up at the
sky, he must touch the earth with some part of him, and generally does
so with his feet."

"And God sets you to do it, Hector?"

"Yes. It's the way He looks after people's feet. He's got to look after
everything, you know, or everything would go wrong. So He gives me the
leather and the tools and the hands--and I must say the head, for it
wants no little head to make a _good_ shoe to measure--and it is as if
He said to me--'There! you make shoes, while I keep the stars right.'
Isn't it a fine thing to have a hand in the general business?"

And Hector looked up with shining eyes in the face of the little boy,
while he pulled at his rosin-ends as if he would make the boot strong
enough to keep out evil spirits.

"I think it's a fine thing to have to make nice new shoes," said Willie;
"but I don't think I should like to mend them when they are soppy and
muddy and out of shape."

"If you would take your share in the general business, you mustn't be
particular. It won't do to be above your business, as they say: for my
part, I would say _below_