“Volunteer guests is good,” he laughed.  “Do you mean that anybody can go?”

“Anybody that is able to be about.  This is Cabinet Day.  There’s a Supreme Court Day and a Senators’ Day, and a Representatives’ Day.  Do you mean to say you weren’t going to call upon your Senator?”

“I didn’t know I had any.”

“Neither did I till I came here.  But you’ve got two; everybody’s got two.  And the President’s wife receives three times a week, and the President has two or three days.  They say the public days at the White House are great fun.  I’ve been to some of the invited, or semi-invited or official evenings.”

He could not see that difference from the great public receptions which Miss Anderson had promised him at Mrs. Whittington’s, though he pretended afterward that he had done so.  The people were more uniformly well dressed, there were not so many of them, and the hostess was sure of knowing her acquaintances at first glance; but there was the same ease, the same unconstraint, the same absence of provincial anxiety which makes a Washington a lighter and friendlier London.  There were rather more sallow attaches; in their low-cut white waistcoats, with small brass buttons, they moved more consciously about, and looked weightier personages than several foreign ministers who were present.

Dan was soon lost from the side of Miss Anderson, who more and more seemed to him important socially.  She seemed, in her present leadership; to know more of life, than he; to be maturer.  But she did not abuse her superiority; she kept an effect of her last summer’s friendliness for him throughout.  Several times, finding herself near him; she introduced him to people.

Guests kept arriving till midnight.  Among the latest, when Dan had lost himself far from Boston in talk with a young lady from Richmond, who spoke with a slur of her vowels that fascinated him, came Mr. and Mrs. Brinkley.  He felt himself grow pale and inattentive to his pretty Virginian.  That accent of Mrs. Brinkley’s recalled him to his history.  He hoped that she would not see him; but in another moment he was greeting her with a warmth which Bostonians seldom show in meeting at Boston.

“When did you come to Washington?” she asked, trying to keep her consciousness out of her eyes, which she let dwell kindly upon him.

“Day before yesterday—­no, yesterday.  It seems a month, I’ve seen and done so much,” he said, with his laugh.  “Miss Anderson’s been showing me the whole of Washington society.  Have you been here long?”

“Since morning,” said Mrs. Brinkley.  And she added, “Miss Anderson?”

“Yes—­Campobello, don’t you know?”

“Oh yes.  Is she here to-night?”

“I came with her and her aunt.”

“Oh yes.”

“How is all Boston?” asked Dan boldly.

“I don’t know; I’m just going down to Old Point Comfort to ask.  Every other house on the Back Bay has been abandoned for the Hygeia.”  Mrs. Brinkley stopped, and then she asked.  “Are you just up from there?”