Explore "The Vultures" by Henry Seton Merriman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Netty did not smoke. She confessed to being rather an old-fashioned person. Which is usually accounted to her for righteousness by men, who, so far as women are concerned, are intensely conservative -- such men, at all events, whose opinion it is worth a woman's while to value.
Miss Mangles, on the other hand, made a point of smoking a cigarette from time to time in public. There were two reasons. The ostensible reason, which she gave freely when asked for it, and even without the asking -- namely, that she was not going to allow men to claim the monopoly of tobacco. There was the other reason, which prompts so many actions in these blatant times -- the unconscious reason that, in going counter to ancient prejudices respecting her sex, she showed contempt for men, and meted out a bitter punishment to the entire race for having consistently and steadily displayed a complete indifference to herself.