 Mordecai accidentally injures his hand with a drill while at work one day and is tended to by his next-door neighbour, Ruth Godbold.Ruth is an impoverished and deeply religious woman supporting six young children by taking in laundry from other households.As a child she emigrates to Sydney from Britain after a farming accident kills her brother, and later works as a domestic servant in the household of wealthy socialite Jinny Chalmers-Robinson.