And with that, Mrs. Dixon turned on her heel and strode triumphantly from the room. Leaving behind her a shocked and speechless Mortimer Ascariot.
***
John Adams Ascariot the third settled down at his desk to go through a stack of papers that had been left there the night before by his meddling secretary, Miss Peach.
He flipped to the first page and was filled with rage as he noted the name at the top of the important shipping contract that was to be going out later that month to the Orient Tea Market. Another contract in which he, John Adams, had (helped) brilliantly negotiate in all of the glory of a true tradesman.
But that rotund, good for nothing, lazy, man-child, Mortimer’s name was plastered all over the documentation that legally immortalized John’s hard work. John glowered a
