When Biddleson got to be teller, the printed cards went into the fire and Miriam shifted her social clutch to the intermediate speed and became Mrs. Ezra D. P. Biddleson. Thus she remained, not too patiently biding her time when she could resume the aristocratic copperplate without endangering her husband's job. Then, oh, certainly then, she would put Mrs. T. back where she belonged. She remembered and would never forget the bitterest time of all, and this was the time when Ezra and Harkaway violently and explosively invented and instantly cast away as unworthy numberless schemes of vengeance upon the now acknowledged social leader of Tidewater. Mrs. Thompson, the execrable Mrs. T., the supercilious and ancestoress Mrs. Thompson, the malignant upstart had dared to write to Miriam a note addresed to Mrs. Ez. Depot Biddleson

"Why, how funny, Miriam," she said. "I was just thinking of you." Which wasn't true, Miriam asserted quickly to herself; Mrs. Thompson thought of nobody but her own self.

I went, but not before I punched the other side of his face for scriptural reasons.