- Meanwhile, Alexandra is back at home, doing her accounting, when Lou and Oscar show up at her door.
- They want to speak with her about Carl. They ask her when he'll be leaving, because people have started to "talk" and they feel she's making them all look ridiculous by keeping him around (2.10.7). If he stays longer, people will start thinking she wants to marry him.
- They tell her that Carl is just after her money and property, and that he just wants to be taken care of.
- Well, Alexandra wants to know what's so wrong with that. Maybe she wants to marry him. And if she does, it's her business.
- Lou is furious that she would give him their property and homestead.
- Alexandra reminds him that when he and Oscar got married, they divided up the land, and that she has a right to do with her land whatever she chooses. Even if they work the land for all those years and help pay the interest on their loans, the law is the law, and the land belongs to her. Plus, she adds, she's made more from her land since they divided everything up.
- Lou says to Oscar that this is what happens when a woman runs a business. They should have taken things into their own hands years ago.
- Alexandra remains cool and collected as she reminds him, again, that she's made most of her fortune since they divided up the land. So he's had no part in it.
- Oscar speaks up, saying that the property really belongs to the men, since they're the ones who are responsible for it, no matter what the property title says. Lou agrees. The men are the true owners because they are responsibly and because they do the work.
- Now, this is where Alexandra starts to lose her temper. What about all the work she's done?
- Her advice is good, Lou says, but good advice is not enough to get the fields weeded.
- Alexandra retorts that good advice is what keeps the fields around for corn to be planted. She reminds him that it was Lou and Oscar who wanted to sell the farm all those years ago.
- They thought she was crazy when she wanted plant alfalfa, just because she heard of it from the man in the river country who had been to the university. Lou even cried the first time she wanted to try planting wheat.
- Lou complains that giving orders is not the same as doing the work yourself. He thinks she was too hard on them, all while she babies Emil.
- She wasn't hard on them, Alexandra corrects, the conditions were hard on them all. She didn't choose this life for herself.
- As the men get ready to leave, Oscar tells her that everyone is laughing at her, a forty-year-old woman taking in a man who is five years younger than her.
- Alexandra tells them again to mind their own business; if they have any concerns, they should talk to their lawyer and see what rights they have to her property. In other words: back off.
- As they leave, they commiserate, complaining that, "you can't do business with women" (2.10.40).
- At the same time, Lou is worried that Oscar offended him with his comment about her age. Oscar says he only meant that she is old enough to know better. But, as Lou reminds himself and Oscar, Alexandra isn't like other women, and maybe she isn't as concerned as they are about their age.