It was the vice-president himself, writing from Chicago, who authorized the new departure and loosened the purse strings.  “Don’t be afraid of spending a little money,” wrote the great man.  “Make your up-town headquarters as attractive as may be, and arrange matters with Ackerton so that your office will not be burdened with too much of the routine legal work.  A successful legal representative will be a good mixer—­as I am sure you are—­and will extend the circle of his acquaintance as rapidly and as far as possible.  Your appointment will be fully justified when you have made your up-town office a place where the good citizens of the capital and the State can drop in for a cordial word with the company’s spokesman.”

Acting upon this suggestion, Blount opened the Temple Court headquarters at once and threw himself energetically into the indicated field.  Ackerton, a technical expert with a needle-like mind and the State code at his fingers’-ends, was left in charge of the working offices in the railroad building, with instructions to apply to his chief only when he needed specific advice.

At the up-town headquarters, Blount gave himself wholly to the pleasant task of making friends.  With a good store of introductions upon which to make a beginning, and with the open-handed, whole-souled camaraderie of the West to help, the list of acquaintances grew with amazing rapidity.  For the three or four weeks after Mrs. Blount had whisked the Annerses away to Wartrace Hall and the habitat of the Megalosauridae, the newly appointed “social secretary” for the railroad, as Honoria had dubbed him, met all comers joyously and accepted all invitations, never inquiring whether they were extended to his father’s son, to the railroad company’s legal chief, or to Evan Blount in his proper person.

During this social interval he saw little of his father, though he was still occupying his share of the private dining-room suite at the Inter-Mountain.  Part of the time, as he knew, the Honorable Senator was at Wartrace Hall, looking after his mammoth ranch, and helping to entertain the visitors from Massachusetts.  But now and again the father came and went; and occasionally there was a dinner a deux in the hotel cafe, with a little good-natured raillery from the senator’s side of the table.

“Got you chasing your feet right lively in the social merry-go-round these days, haven’t they, son?  Like it, as far as you’ve gone?” said the ex-cattle-king one evening when Evan had come down in evening clothes, ready to go to madam the governor’s wife’s strictly formal “informal” a little later on.

“It’s all in the day’s work,” laughed the younger man.  “I shall need all the ‘pull’ I can get a little later on, sha’n’t I?”

“I shouldn’t wonder if you did, son; I shouldn’t wonder if you did.  And I reckon you’re doing pretty good work, too, mixing and mingling the way you do.  Was it McVickar’s idea, or your own—­this sudden splash into the social water-hole?”