The Tinleys were their match at epithets, and any low contention of this kind obscured for them the social summit they hoped to attain; the dream whereof was their prime nourishment.
That the Tinleys really were their match, they acknowledged, upon the admission of the despicable nature of the game.

The Tinleys had winged a dreadful shaft at them; not in itself to be dreaded, but that it struck a weak point; it was a common shot that exploded a magazine; and for a time it quite upset their social policy, causing them to act like simple young ladies who feel things and resent them.

The ladies of Brookfield had let it be known that, in their privacy together, they were Pole, Polar, and North Pole.

Pole, Polar, and North Pole were designations of the three shades of distance which they could convey in a bow: a form of salute they cherished as peculiarly their own; being a method they had invented to rebuke the intrusiveness of the outer world, and hold away all strangers until approved worthy.

Even friends had occasionally to submit to it in a softened form.