If I'd consented, you'd have gone down to the river and
scraped along on poor farms for the rest of your lives. When I put
in our first field of alfalfa you both opposed me, just because I
first 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 said
so. You know as well as I do that alfalfa has been the salvation
of this country. You all laughed at me when I said our land here
was about ready for wheat, and I had to raise three big wheat crops
before the neighbors quit putting all their land in corn. Why, I
remember 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 to
put in a crop, she thinks she's put it in. It makes women conceited
to meddle in business. I shouldn't think you'd want to remind us
how 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 certainly
didn't choose to be the kind of girl I was.
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