"

"There is something to know about everything; just see what a lot Mr.
Wallis knew about horses," replied Rupert.

"Yes, and about other things too; but I do wonder what he will say when
he hears how nearly I wrecked his beautiful wagon," said Nealie, with a
sigh, for the thought of her shortcomings worried her a good deal.

"He won't trouble, or, if he does, he knows that Mr. Melrose will see
that everything is put straight," said Sylvia.

"I do not like being indebted to the promiscuous charity of strangers,
and Mr. Melrose was hardly more than a stranger to us," Nealie put in a
little primly. Being the eldest, it was natural she should be a little
more conventional than the others.

"Oh, Mr. Melrose likes being kind to people! Mrs. Warner told me so,"
remarked Rumple, with the air of knowing all that there was to be known.
"He is most awfully rich, too, and he came into his money quite by a
fluke."

"What is a fluke?" demanded Billykins, who was catching rainwater in the
tin dish in which he had been eating his breakfast, so that he could
have a wash-up after his feed.

"A fluke is what happens," explained Rumple vaguely. "It was a fluke
that toppled our wagon over last night."

"There was not any money in that," said Don decidedly.

"Very much the reverse, I should say," laughed Nealie. "Think of the
broken basins, the waste of marmalade and pepper, not to say anything of
the damage to our clothes, and all the rest of it. There are flukes and
flukes, and our kind, unfortunately, was not the sort that pays. But, do
you know, I don't believe that it rains as fast as it did, and so I am
going to harness Rocky, and then we will crawl ahead for a few miles;
for if we stop here we shall starve, and I want some dinner."

CHAPTER XIII

In Sight of Hammerville

It was the next day but one, and Rockefeller was toiling along the heavy
road outside Pomeroy, when a man in a cabbage-tree hat, red flannel
shirt, and long boots rode up to Hutton's store, which stood on the
outskirts of the town, and, seeing the van coming, dismounted, threw his
horse's bridle over the fence, and walked towards it.

"Are you the Plumstead lot?" he asked, with a jerk of his hat towards
Nealie, which was meant for politeness and accepted in the same spirit.

"We are," she answered, with a bow, wondering nervously if he were a
bushranger, of which she had read so much during the voyage and yet had
not set eyes on since landin