“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 you see he’s just a tramp and he’s after your money? He wants to be taken care of, he does!”
“Well, suppose I want to take care of him? Whose business is it but 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. “I know you and Oscar have always expected that it would be left to your children, and I’m not sure but what you’re right. But I’ll do exactly as I please with the rest of my land, boys.”