“I should say not. What, me a farmer? Tobacco is played out.”
“Mortimer Marshall!”
“You don’t think I’m going to be a planter, do you?”
“Mortimer!” Mrs. Marshall was erect in her chair, her cheeks pale.
“Why, mater, I had no idea that you felt that way. You don’t mean that I’m to come back here and take old Marsh Green’s place. I can’t grow tobacco. I don’t know how and I don’t want to. Young men don’t do those things nowadays. They get out and hustle.”
“Mortimer, your father was a planter from boyhood until he died. His father was one and his father’s father. Aspley Place has grown tobacco for one hundred and fifty years. In Virginia it is a gentleman’s life.”
“No, mater,” answered Morey in a low and kind voice. “It was. But it isn’t now. You love this place—so do I. But I’ve been out in the world, a little—you haven’t. Things have gone on all around us and we didn’t know it. I can’t be a tobacco planter. I won’t.”
Mrs. Marshall’s lips trembled but she said nothing.
“I’ll go to school, mater; I’ll even go to college if you like. But then I want to go to an engineering school. After that I’m going to make you famous. I’m going to make the perfect flying machine. Then we’ll move away from this old place—”