In 1845 Buchanan became Secretary of State under President Polk. "My labors are great," he wrote to Harriet, shortly after entering upon the duties of his new office, "but they do not '_way_' me down, as you write the word. Now I would say '_weigh_,' but doctors may differ on this point." Further on in the same letter he continues thus: "Your friends, Mrs. Bancroft [wife of the Secretary of War] and the Pleasantons often inquire for you. They have given you somewhat of a name here, and Mrs. Polk and Miss Rucker, her niece, have several times urged me to permit you to come and pass some time with them. I have been as deaf as the adder to their request, knowing, to use a word of your grandmother, that you are too 'outsetting' already. There is a time for all things under the sun, as the wise man says, and your time will yet come." Again, he sends love from Miss Hetty, his housekeeper, and a message to the effect that she would be glad to see Harriet in Washington. "I fear she might be twice glad," added Buchanan, "once on your arrival and still more so on your departure." It was Buchanan's custom to spend his summers or a portion of them at Bedford Springs, taking his nieces with him. To the younger it has ever been a place of happy memories. There, when she was still quite a young girl, she met the man, then also full of all the enthusiasm of youth, to whom, after exacting a prolonged devotion, she finally surrendered herself. In one of her uncle's letters written to her in the summer of 1846 he tells her he will not be able to go to Bedford before the 10th of August, "when the season will be over and it will be too late for Mary to enact the character of belle; and you," he continued, "are quite too young to make the attempt."