Here a schooner awaited them, already loaded heavily with the precious rice, two hundred barrels of it, rough-polished and ready for sale in Charleston. Theo was carried on board, and the Live-Oak set sail, skimming along with a following wind the whole sixty miles.

They entered the Cooper River just as the Charleston city lights began to prick yellow against the darkening spring sky. Theo admired the graceful eluster of houses with its lofty church spires—slender, pointed silhouettes—but she never saw it without a sick yearning for that other skyline so many miles to the north. The two cities were so maddeningly similar in many ways—both built on points with two encircling rivers, both with batteries at their tips.

But the other was home, and this one, though more beautiful and certainly cleaner, was not. And never would be—for her.

They went, as a matter of course, to the great Alston House on King Street. The lovely Georgian mansion which Charlestonians still persisted in calling the Brewton House after its original owner, though Colonel William had bought it ten years ago when he married his present wife, Mary Motte, whose family had inherited it from the Brewtons.

Since it was customary for all the planters to spend at least two months of the year in Charleston, and since Joseph could well afford it, Theo had prodded him into getting a house of his own on Church Street. But it was not ready for them, of course. Nothing was ever ready on time, and only Yankee blood would expect the impossible.

So they drove, perforce, to the family mansion, and found to Theo's immense relief that Colonel William was there alone.

He greeted them with absent-minded cordiality and complete oblivion to the cause of their visit. 'Delighted to see you, my boy. Delighted. And Theodosia—how well you look!' He did not look at her at all, but at a point above her head. 'How unfortunate that you have just missed the others! They left yesterday for Sullivan's, where you will no doubt join them in a day or so.'

Oh, no, we won't, Theodosia thought. I'm not going to have my baby in that cramped beach cottage and in the company of Mrs. Alston, her six children, and Maria and Charlotte.

'The servants will show you to a room,' continued the Colonel vaguely. 'There must be one vacant for once. How did you leave things on the Waccamaw? I must run up there in a day or two. Hubbard writes me that the trunks need repairing on the west fields at Clifton. Can't have the young rice flooded at the wrong time, eh?'