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While Emil and Carl were amusing themselves at the fair, Alexandrawas at home, busy with her account-books, which had been neglectedof late. She was almost through with her figures when she hearda cart drive up to the gate, and looking out of the window she sawher two older brothers. They had seemed to avoid her ever sinceCarl Linstrum's arrival, four weeks ago that day, and she hurriedto the door to welcome them. She saw at once that they had comewith some very definite purpose. They followed her stiffly intothe sitting-room. Oscar sat down, but Lou walked over to the windowand remained standing, his hands behind him.
"You are by yourself?" he asked, looking toward the doorway intothe parlor.
"Yes. Carl and Emil went up to the Catholic fair."
For a few moments neither of the men spoke.
Then Lou came out sharply. "How soon does he intend to go awayfrom here?"
"I don't know, Lou. Not for some time, I hope." Alexandra spokein an even, quiet tone that often exasperated her brothers. Theyfelt that she was trying to be superior with them.
Oscar spoke up grimly. "We thought we ought to tell you that peoplehave begun to talk," he said meaningly.
Alexandra looked at him. "What about?"
Oscar met her eyes blankly. "About you, keeping him here so long.It looks bad for him to be hanging on to a woman this way. Peoplethink you're getting taken in."
Alexandra shut her account-book firmly. "Boys," she said seriously,"don't let's go on with this. We won't come out anywhere. I can'ttake advice on such a matter. I know you mean well, but you mustnot feel responsible for me in things of this sort. If we go onwith this talk it will only make hard feeling."
Lou whipped about from the window. "You ought to think a littleabout your family. You're making us all ridiculous."
"How am I?"
"People are beginning to say you want to marry the fellow."
"Well, and what is ridiculous about that?"
Lou and Oscar exchanged outraged looks. "Alexandra! Can't yousee he's just a tramp and he's after your money? He wants to betaken care of, he does!"
"Well, suppose I want to take care of him? Whose business is itbut my own?"
"Don't you know he'd get hold of your property?"
"He'd get hold of what I wished to give him, certainly."
Oscar sat up suddenly and Lou clutched at his bristly hair.
"Give him?" Lou shouted. "Our property, our homestead?"
"I don't know about the homestead," said Alexandra quietly. "Iknow you and Oscar have always expected that it would be left toyour children, and I'm not sure but what you're right. But I'lldo exactly as I please with the rest of my land, boys."
"The rest of your land!" cried Lou, growing more excited everyminute. "Didn't all the land come out of the homestead? It wasbought with money borrowed on the homestead, and Oscar and me workedourselves to the bone paying interest on it."
"Yes, you paid the interest. But when you married we made a divisionof the land, and you were satisfied. I've made more on my farmssince I've been alone than when we all worked together."
"Everything you've made has come out of the original land that usboys worked for, hasn't it? The farms and all that comes out ofthem belongs to us as a family."
Alexandra waved her hand impatiently. "Come now, Lou. Stick tothe facts. You are talking nonsense. Go to the county clerk andask him who owns my land, and whether my titles are good."
Lou turned to his brother. "This is what comes of letting a womanmeddle in business," he said bitterly. "We ought to have takenthings in our own hands years ago. But she liked to run things,and we humored her. We thought you had good sense, Alexandra. Wenever thought you'd do anything foolish."
Alexandra rapped impatiently on her desk with her knuckles."Listen, Lou. Don't talk wild. You say you ought to have takenthings into your own hands years ago. I suppose you mean beforeyou left home. But how could you take hold of what wasn't there?I've got most of what I have now since we divided the property;I've built it up myself, and it has nothing to do with you."
Oscar spoke up solemnly. "The property of a family really belongsto the men of the family, no matter about the title. If anythinggoes wrong, it's the men that are held responsible."
"Yes, of course," Lou broke in. "Everybody knows that. Oscar andme have always been easy-going and we've never made any fuss. Wewere willing you should hold the land and have the good of it, butyou got no right to part with any of it. We worked in the fieldsto pay for the first land you bought, and whatever's come out ofit has got to be kept in the family."
Oscar reinforced his brother, his mind fixed on the one point hecould see. "The property of a family belongs to the men of thefamily, because they are held responsible, and because they do thework."
Alexandra looked from one to the other, her eyes full of indignation.She had been impatient before, but now she was beginning to feelangry. "And what about my work?" she asked in an unsteady voice.
Lou looked at the carpet. "Oh, now, Alexandra, you always tookit pretty easy! Of course we wanted you to. You liked to manageround, and we always humored you. We realize you were a greatdeal of help to us. There's no woman anywhere around that knowsas much about business as you do, and we've always been proud ofthat, and thought you were pretty smart. But, of course, the realwork always fell on us. Good advice is all right, but it don'tget the weeds out of the corn."
"Maybe not, but it sometimes puts in the crop, and it sometimeskeeps the fields for corn to grow in," said Alexandra dryly. "Why,Lou, I can remember when you and Oscar wanted to sell this homesteadand all the improvements to old preacher Ericson for two thousanddollars. If I'd consented, you'd have gone down to the river andscraped along on poor farms for the rest of your lives. When I putin our first field of alfalfa you both opposed me, just because Ifirst heard about it from a young man who had been to the University.You said I was being taken in then, and all the neighbors saidso. You know as well as I do that alfalfa has been the salvationof this country. You all laughed at me when I said our land herewas about ready for wheat, and I had to raise three big wheat cropsbefore the neighbors quit putting all their land in corn. Why, Iremember you cried, Lou, when we put in the first big wheat-planting,and said everybody was laughing at us."
Lou turned to Oscar. "That's the woman of it; if she tells you toput in a crop, she thinks she's put it in. It makes women conceitedto meddle in business. I shouldn't think you'd want to remind ushow hard you were on us, Alexandra, after the way you baby Emil."
"Hard on you? I never meant to be hard. Conditions were hard.Maybe I would never have been very soft, anyhow; but I certainlydidn't choose to be the kind of girl I was. If you take even avine and cut it back again and again, it grows hard, like a tree."
Lou felt that they were wandering from the point, and thatin digression Alexandra might unnerve him. He wiped his foreheadwith a jerk of his handkerchief. "We never doubted you, Alexandra.We never questioned anything you did. You've always had your ownway. But you can't expect us to sit like stumps and see you doneout of the property by any loafer who happens along, and makingyourself ridiculous into the bargain."
Oscar rose. "Yes," he broke in, "everybody's laughing to see youget took in; at your age, too. Everybody knows he's nearly fiveyears younger than you, and is after your money. Why, Alexandra,you are forty years old!"
"All that doesn't concern anybody but Carl and me. Go to town andask your lawyers what you can do to restrain me from disposing ofmy own property. And I advise you to do what they tell you; forthe authority you can exert by law is the only influence you willever have over me again." Alexandra rose. "I think I would rathernot have lived to find out what I have to-day," she said quietly,closing her desk.
Lou and Oscar looked at each other questioningly. There seemed tobe nothing to do but to go, and they walked out.
"You can't do business with women," Oscar said heavily as heclambered into the cart. "But anyhow, we've had our say, at last."
Lou scr
atched his head. "Talk of that kind might come too high, youknow; but she's apt to be sensible. You hadn't ought to said thatabout her age, though, Oscar. I'm afraid that hurt her feelings;and the worst thing we can do is to make her sore at us. She'dmarry him out of contrariness."
"I only meant," said Oscar, "that she is old enough to know better,and she is. If she was going to marry, she ought to done it longago, and not go making a fool of herself now."
Lou looked anxious, nevertheless. "Of course," he reflected hopefullyand inconsistently, "Alexandra ain't much like other women-folks.Maybe it won't make her sore. Maybe she'd as soon be forty asnot!"