When he lifted his head you might see that, notwithstanding the ruggedness
of his face, he was a good looking man, with strong, well-proportioned
features, in which, even on Sundays, when he scrubbed his face
unmercifully, there would still remain lines suggestive of ingrained rosin
and heelball. On week days he was not so careful to remove every sign of
the labour by which he earned his bread; but when his work was over till
the morning, and he was free to sit down to a book, he would never even
touch one without first carefully washing his hands and face. In the
workshop, Maggie's place was a leather-seated stool like her father's, a
yard or so away from his, to leave room for his elbows in drawing out the
lingels (_rosined threads_): there she would at once resume the work she
had left unfinished the night before; for it was a curious trait in the
father, early inherited by the daughter, that he would never rise from a
finished job, however near might be the hour for dropping work, without
having begun another to go on with in the morning. It was wonderful how
much cleaner Maggie managed to keep her hands; but then to her fell
naturally the lighter work for women and children. She declared herself
ambitious, however, of one day making with her own hands a perfect pair of
top-boots.

The advantages she gained from this constant intercourse with her father
were incalculable. Without the least loss to her freedom of thought, nay,
on the contrary, to the far more rapid development of her truest liberty,
the soutar seemed to avoid no subject as unsuitable for the girl's
consideration, but to insist only on its being regarded from the highest
attainable point of view. Matters of indifferent import they seldom, if
ever, discussed at all; and nothing she knew her father cared about did
Maggie ever allude to with indifference. Full of an honest hilarity ever
ready to break out when occasion occurred, she was at the same time