"Of course!" exclaimed Alison, a little astonished that this had not occurred to her earlier. Then her face grew suddenly warm. "You mean they would have recognized that I was acting—on your instructions?"
Thorne looked at her with a disconcerting steadiness.
"You haven't quite grasped the most important fact yet. They would have wondered how I was able to get you to do it—in other words, what gave me such a hold on you. The trouble is that there's an explanation that would naturally suggest itself."
"Yes," murmured Alison, with her eyes turned away from him; "that would have been unpleasant—for both of us."
Thorne did not quite know what to make of the pause, though he had a shadowy idea that it somehow rendered her assertion less positive, and left the point open to doubt. In any case, it set his heart beating fast, and he had some trouble in holding himself in hand. Outwardly, however, he was graver than usual.
"Well," he added, "I didn't think it desirable in several ways. You see, a pedler is, after all, a person of no account in this part of Canada. He has no particular interest in the fortune of the country; he doesn't help its progress; his calling benefits nobody."
"But you are a farmer now," protested Alison, glancing at him covertly.
"Strictly on probation. In fact, there's very little doubt that my new venture is generally regarded as a harmless eccentricity. It will be some time before my neighbors realize that I'm capable of anything that's not connected with an amusing frolic." He stopped a moment, and smiled at her. "On the whole, I can't reasonably blame them. My situation's a very precarious one; a frozen crop would break me."
Alison wondered what the drift of these observations could be, for she imagined that he must have had some particular purpose in saying so much. It was, so far as her experience went, a very unusual thing for a man to confess that he was an object of amusement to his neighbors, or that there was a probability of his failing to make his mark in his profession.
"I suppose," she suggested, to help him out, "you're not content with such a state of things?"