“What in the world brought him?” pursued his sister-in-law more guardedly, as if made aware by some lurking pain that an impetuous interest was not for invalids.
“The ideal of friendship. I happened to say that I was feeling a little out of sorts and was coming up here, and he jumped at the chance to disarrange himself by coming with me. He was illustrating his great principle that New York is the best place to spend the summer, and it cost him something of a struggle to give it up, but he conquered.”
“Is he really so queer?”
“He or we. I won’t make so bold as to say which.”
“Has he still got that remarkable protégé of his on his hands?”
“No; Rogers has given Easton his freedom. He’s gone on to a farm, with all Easton’s board and lodging, Latin and French, in him. His modest aspiration is finally to manage a market garden.”
“What a wicked waste of beneficence!”
“Easton looks at it differently. He says that no one else would ever have given Rogers an education, and that the learning wasn’t more thrown away on him than on many, perhaps most, people who are sent to college; learning has to be thrown away somehow. Besides, he economized by sharing his room with Rogers, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know that. Don’t you think that was rather more than Providence required of Mr. Easton?”
“I can’t say, Mrs. Gilbert.”