He was no more than fashionably late at the Van Brock house, and fortunately he was able to reckon himself among the chosen few for whom Miss Portia’s door swung on hospitable hinges at all hours.  Loring had known her in Washington, and he had stood sponsor for Kent in the first week of the exile’s residence at the capital.  Thereafter she had taken Kent up on his own account, and by now he was deep in her debt.  For one thing, she had set the fashion in the matter of legislative receptions—­her detractors, knowing nothing whatever about it, hinted that she had been an amateur social lobbyist in Washington, playing the game for the pure zest of it—­and at these functions Kent had learned many things pertinent to his purpose as watch-dog for the railroad company and legal adviser to his chief—­things not named openly on the floor of the House or of the Senate chamber.

There was a crush in the ample mansion in Alameda Square, as there always was at Miss Van Brock’s “open evenings,” and when Kent came down from the cloakroom he had to inch his way by littles through the crowded reception-parlors in the search for the Brentwood party.  It was unsuccessful at first; but later, catching a glimpse of Elinor at the piano, and another of Penelope inducting an up-country legislator into the mysteries of social small-talk, he breathed freer.  His haphazard guess had hit the mark, and the finding of Ormsby was now only a question of moments.

It was Miss Van Brock herself who told him where to look for the club-man—­though not at his first asking.

“You did come, then,” she said, giving him her hand with a frank little smile of welcome.  “Some one said you were not going to be frivolous any more, and I wondered if you would take it out on me.  Have you been at the night session?”

“Yes; at what you and your frivolities have left of it.  A good third of the Solons seem to be sitting in permanence in Alameda Square.”

“’Solons’,” she repeated.  “That recalls Editor Brownlo’s little joke—­only he didn’t mean it.  He wrote of them as ‘Solons,’ but the printer got it ‘solans’.  The member from Caliente read the article and the word stuck in his mind.  In an unhappy hour he asked Colonel Mack’s boy—­Harry, the irrepressible, you know—­to look it up for him.  Harry did it, and of course took the most public occasion he could find to hand in his answer.  ‘It’s geese, Mr. Hackett!’ he announced triumphantly; and after we were all through laughing at him the member from the warm place turned it just as neatly as a veteran.  ‘Well, I’m Hackett,’ he said.”

David Kent laughed, as he was in duty bound, but he still had Ormsby on his mind.

“I see you have Mrs. Brentwood and her daughters here:  can you tell me where I can find Mr. Brookes Ormsby?”

“I suppose I could if I should try.  But you mustn’t hurry me.  There is a vacant corner in that davenport beyond the piano:  please put me there and fetch me an ice.  I’ll wait for you.”