"Does Thorne really mean to turn farmer?" she asked at length.
"It looks as if he does," answered Mrs. Farquhar. "Why shouldn't he?"
"I can't think of any reason," replied Alison. "Still, it isn't what I should have anticipated. What can have influenced him?"
"I have a suspicion that he means to get married. He couldn't expect his wife to set up housekeeping in a wagon, though, for that matter, I don't know whether he lives in the vehicle or camps on the ground beside it."
Alison knew, however, and on the whole she was glad that it was too dark for her companion to see her face clearly. It was, for no very ostensible reason, not exactly pleasant to think of Thorne's getting married at all. The idea of his being willing to contemplate marriage, so to speak, in the abstract, as the men who went to Winnipeg for their wives did, was repugnant to her, and the alternative possibility that he had somebody in particular in view already afforded her no great consolation.
"I suppose he wouldn't have very much trouble if that was his idea," she said with a trace of disdain.
"No," responded Mrs. Farquhar; "there would be very little trouble in Leslie Thorne's case. Whatever that man may lack it won't be the love of women."
It occurred to Alison that there was truth in this. She could even confess that the man's light-hearted manner, his whimsical generosity and his daring appealed to her.
"He doesn't seem to get on very well with Florence Hunter," she said reflectively.
Mrs. Farquhar laughed.