k, 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 stopp