"Then," advised her companion, "you'll just have to do the same as the rest of us. You're almost as good-looking as I am." She lowered her voice a little. "I dare say you have noticed that those Norwegians have gone?"
Alison had noticed that, and also that two or three lean and wiry men with faces almost blackened by exposure to the frost had been hanging about the emigrant quarters for a day or two preceding the disappearance of the girls. The blood crept into her cheeks as she remembered it, but her companion laughed, somewhat harshly.
"Oh," she explained, "they're married and gone off to farm; but what I want to tell you is that I'm going to follow their example to-morrow. It's quite straight. We're to be married in the morning. He says he's got a nice house, and he looks as if he'd treat me decently." She laid her hand on Alison's arm, and seemed to hesitate. "A neighbor, another farmer, came in with him—and he hasn't found anybody yet."
Alison shrank from her, white in face now, with an almost intolerable sense of disgust, but in another moment or two the blood surged into her cheeks, and her companion made a half-ashamed gesture.
"Oh, well," she said, "I think you're foolish, but I won't say any more about it. Besides, I had only a minute or two. Charley's waiting in the street for me now."
She withdrew somewhat hastily, and Alison sat still, almost too troubled to be capable of indignation, forcing herself to think. One thing was becoming clear; she must escape from Winnipeg before the unpleasant suggestion was made to her again, perhaps by some man in person, and go on farther West. After all, she had one friend, the one her mother had persecuted, living somewhere within reach of a station which she had discovered was situated about three hundred miles down the line, and Florence might take her in, for a time at least. She decided to set out and try to find her the next day. Rising with sudden determination, she walked across to the station to make inquiries about the train, and as she reached it a man strode up to her. It was evident that he meant to speak, and as there was just then no official to whom she could appeal, she drew herself up and faced him resolutely. He was a young man, neatly dressed in store clothes, though he did not look like an inhabitant of the city, and he had what she could not help admitting was a pleasant expression.
"You're Miss Leigh," he said, taking off his wide gray hat, and his intonation betrayed him to be an Englishman.
"How did you learn my name?" Alison asked chillingly.
"I made inquiries," he confessed. "The fact is, I asked Miss Carstairs to get me an introduction, and to tell the truth I wasn't very much astonished when she said you wouldn't hear of it."
Alison recognized now that the man was the one her companion had alluded to as her prospective husband's neighbor, and for a moment she felt that she could have struck him. That feeling, however, passed. There was a hint of deference in his attitude; he met the one indignant glance she flashed at him, which was somehow reassuring, and since she could not run away ignominiously she stood her ground.