Emil started up and then sat down again. “Alexandra,” he said slowly, in his deep young baritone, “I don’t want to go away to law school this fall. Let me put it off another year. I want to take a year off and look around. It’s awfully easy to rush into a profession you don’t really like, and awfully hard to get out of it. Linstrum and I have been talking about that.”
“Very well, Emil. Only don’t go off looking for land.” She came up and put her hand on his shoulder. “I’ve been wishing you could stay with me this winter.”
“That’s just what I don’t want to do, Alexandra. I’m restless. I want to go to a new place. I want to go down to the City of Mexico to join one of the University fellows who’s at the head of an electrical plant. He wrote me he could give me a little job, enough to pay my way, and I could look around and see what I want to do. I want to go as soon as harvest is over. I guess Lou and Oscar will be sore about it.”
“I suppose they will.” Alexandra sat down on the lounge beside him. “They are very angry with me, Emil. We have had a quarrel. They will not come here again.”
Emil scarcely heard what she was saying; he did not notice the sadness of her tone. He was thinking about the reckless life he meant to live in Mexico.
“What about?” he asked absently.
“About Carl Linstrum. They are afraid I am going to marry him, and that some of my property will get away from them.”
Emil shrugged his shoulders. “What nonsense!” he murmured. “Just like them.”
Alexandra drew back. “Why nonsense, Emil?”
“Why, you’ve never thought of such a thing, have you? They always have to have something to fuss about.”