She did not, however, return in October because in the late summer her strength declined alarmingly, and Aaron sent her to Ballston Springs to take the waters.

On September the eighth Aaron wrote to Joseph

Doctors Bard, Hosack, and Brown join me in opinion that she ought immediately to wean her child. This she peremptorily refused, and the bare proposition occasioned so many tears and so much distress that I abandoned it. Within the last three days, however, she has such a loss of appetite and prostration of strength, that she is satisfied of the necessity of the measure for the sake of the child, if not for herself; and I have this day sent off a man to the country to find a suitable nurse.

Aaron found a nurse, a stalwart French peasant girl of twenty-three. He did not find her in the country, but huddled, miserably homesick, in a frowzy little boarding-house by the waterfront. Sophie du Pont dc Nemours, who interested herself in all her immigrating countrymen, had told Aaron about her, and he engaged her the minute he saw her. Her applecheeked healthiness, her shrewdness and air of quiet capability were her references, and Theodosia, who had been prepared to dislike any woman who usurped her own place with the baby, lost all resentment at the first sight of Eleanore in her starched white headdress. Its streamers whisked through the air as the red work-scarred hands reached out to the baby with brisk, reassuring tenderness. 'O, e'est un petit amour, Madame,' she crooned, dandling the baby. 'We will make heem gros et fort, nous deux'. Nous deux! We two! From that moment it was always that for Eleanore, she and her mistress. Her loyalty and affection never wavered during the ten years of life which remained to them both.

On November the twelfth, Theodosia sailed back to the Carolinas, and again on the Enterprise. Besides Eleanore and the flourishing baby, she had with her a French chef whose reputed culinary prowess would surely inaugurate a new era on the Waccamaw.

This time, thought Theo, with renewed optimism, everything will be different. The Oaks had been refurbished, and would be infinitely more comfortable with the addition of the two French servants. She would be insulated from the slaves and from Venus. Surely Joseph would no longer refuse to send the girl away. He would understand how Theo felt, because their letters had brought them close. They would begin together a new and sweeter relationship.