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Updated: July 10, 2025
There are seven of us, you see; it is not as if we were just one or two," she answered brightly. "Hammerville? I wonder whether that is the Hammerville in the Murrumbidgee district, where Tom Fletcher went to live?" said Mr. Melrose in a musing fashion. "They have a little way of repeating names in these colonial places which is rather distracting.
The district outside Hammerville on the Mostyn track was at first mainly composed of rich pasture, mostly settled by dairy farmers, although farther away on the higher ground it was sheep farming that was most in evidence.
Twenty miles out of Hammerville the road had dwindled to a grassy track, and as they were now on the northern side of the Murrumbidgee River the country grew very wild and mountainous, the track cut through forests which the doctor told Nealie had only been half-explored, and the hilltops were so solitary that it did not seem as if there were any people in the world at all.
They reached the outskirts of Hammerville in the late afternoon, and stopped at the very first house to enquire where Dr. Plumstead lived. The woman who opened the door to them declared that she did not know. "I don't hold with doctors, and physic, and that sort of stuff, so I don't know nothing about them," she said ungraciously, and then shut the door in their faces.
This lameness was one of the private worries of Nealie, for she did not believe that he need be lame if only the weak foot and ankle were properly treated. However, her father would doubtless see that the dear eldest brother had all the care that was necessary, and so until they reached Hammerville she would just have to leave the matter where it was. Mr.
"Do you mean that the railway does not go nearer than twenty miles from Hammerville?" cried Sylvia. "Why, the place must be quite at the back of beyond!" "That is just about where it is, my dear; and if you thought that it was going to be a second Sydney, why, you are in for a pretty big disappointment, I am afraid," said Rupert, who was still poring over the map.
Thunder grumbled in the west, and the lightning played fitfully along the distant horizon. "There is Hammerville!" cried Sylvia, flinging out her hand in the direction where tall chimneys stood outlined against a copper-hued sky. "What a long way off!" cried Nealie, with a new note of dismay in her voice.
If he had only known it, the hearing was good for him too, for he had been very ready to despise the man who had given up his practice in Hammerville and rushed away because he had not the moral courage to live down a scandal.
He was sitting under the tilt of a light wagon with Rupert, the two small boys, and Ducky, while Nealie and Sylvia occupied the post of honour in front, and guided the steps of the big horse which was to draw the wagon to Hammerville. Nealie held reins and whip in quite a professional style, and if she was nervous she took good care to say nothing about it.
"And she says that last winter, when her little boy was ill, a Dr. Plumstead came out from Hammerville to see him," chanted Sylvia, whirling round on the tips of her toes in the dusty track, and flinging up her hands like an Italian dancing-girl, which made Rocky snort and plunge as if he wanted to join in the fun.
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