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The Open Window
by Saki (H.H. Munro), 1930
A trip to the countryside is supposed to calm the nerves . . .
just not THIS countryside.
“My aunt will be down presently, Mr.
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Nuttel,” said a very confident young lady of
fifteen. “In the meantime you must try
and put up with me.”
Framton Nuttel tried to say the
correct something which would
flatter the girl in front of him
without unduly discounting the
aunt that was to come. Privately he
doubted more than ever whether
these formal visits to the homes
of total strangers would do much
towards calming his nerves,
which is why he had come to the
countryside in the first place.
“I know how it will be,” his
sister had said back when he was
preparing to depart to this rural
retreat. “You will bury yourself down
there and not speak to a living soul,
and your nerves will be worse than
ever from moping. I shall just give you
letters of introduction to all the people
I know there. Some of them, as far as I
can remember, were quite nice.”
Now Framton was wondering
whether Mrs. Sappleton, the girl’s aunt,
the lady to whom he was presenting one of
the letters of introduction, had been one of
the nice ones.
“Do you know many of the people round
here?” asked the niece, when she judged that
they had sat in silence long enough.
“Hardly a soul,” said Framton. “My sister
was staying here, at the church, you know,
some four years ago, and she gave me letters
of introduction to some of the people here.”
He made the last statement in a tone of
distinct regret.
“Then you know practically nothing
about my aunt?” pursued the selfpossessed young lady.
“Only her name and address,”
admitted Framton. He was
wondering whether Mrs.
Sappleton was married or a
widow. There was something
about the room that seemed to
suggest a man lived there, but
he couldn’t be sure.
“Her great tragedy
happened just three years
ago,” said the girl. “That would
be since your sister’s time.”
“Her tragedy?” asked
Frampton. Somehow in this
restful country spot tragedies
seemed out of place.
“You may wonder why we keep
that window wide open on an
October afternoon,” said the niece,
pointing to a large set of French doors that
opened on to a lawn.
“It is quite warm for the time of year,”
said Framton. “But has that window got
anything to do with the tragedy?”
“Out through that window, three years
ago to the day, my aunt’s husband and her
two young brothers went off for their day’s
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© 2010 Mack Lewis
www.mackowiecki.com
The Open Window – Page 1 of 6
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She rattled on cheerfully about the
shooting and the scarcity of birds, and the
prospects for duck in the winter. To Framton
it was all purely horrible. He made a
desperate but only partially successful
effort to turn the talk on to a less ghastly
topic, he was aware that his hostess was
giving him only a fragment of her attention,
and her eyes were constantly straying past
him to the open window and the lawn
beyond. It was certainly an unfortunate
coincidence that he should have paid his visit
on this tragic anniversary.
“The doctors agree in ordering me
complete rest, an absence of mental
excitement, and avoidance of anything in the
nature of violent physical
exercise,” announced
Framton, who
labored under the
delusion that total
strangers are hungry
for the least detail of
one’s sicknesses and
infirmities, their cause
and cure. “On the
matter of diet they are
not so much in
agreement,” he
continued.
“No?” said Mrs.
Sappleton, in a voice which only replaced a
yawn at the last moment. Then she suddenly
brightened into alert attention--but not to
what Framton was saying.
“Here they are at last!” she cried. “Just in
time for tea, and don’t they look as if they
were muddy up to the eyes!”
Framton shivered slightly and turned
towards the niece with a look intended to
show sympathy, but the girl was staring out
through the open window with a dazed
horror in her eyes! In a chill shock of
nameless fear Framton swung round in his
seat and looked in the same direction.
In the deepening twilight three figures
were walking across the lawn towards the
window, they all carried guns under their
arms, and one of them was additionally
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hunting, but they never came back. In
crossing the moor to their favorite snipeshooting ground they were all three
swallowed in a treacherous bit of swamp. It
had been that dreadful wet summer, you
know, and places that were safe in other
years gave way suddenly without warning.
Their bodies were never recovered. That was
the dreadful part of it.” Here the child’s voice
lost its self-possessed note and became
falteringly human. “Poor Auntie always
thinks that they will come back someday,
they and the little brown spaniel that was lost
with them, and walk in through that window
just as they used to do. That is why the
window is kept open
every evening till it is
quite dusk. Poor dear
Auntie, she has often
told me how they went
out, her husband with his
white waterproof coat over
his arm, and Ronnie, her
youngest brother, singing
“Bertie, why do you bound?”
He always did that to tease her,
because she said it got on her
nerves. Do you know, sometimes
on still, quiet evenings like
this, I almost get a creepy
feeling that they really will all
walk in through that window. . . . ”
She broke off with a little shudder. It was
a relief to Framton when the aunt bustled
into the room with a whirl of apologies for
being late in making her appearance.
“I hope Vera has been amusing you?” she
said.
“She has been very . . . interesting,” said
Framton.
“I hope you don’t mind the open
window,” said Mrs. Sappleton briskly. “My
husband and brothers will be home directly
from shooting, and they always come in this
way. They’ve been out for snipe in the
marshes today, so they’ll make a fine mess
over my poor carpets. So like you men folk,
isn’t it?”
© 2010 Mack Lewis
www.mackowiecki.com
The Open Window – Page 2 of 6
“A most extraordinary man, a Mr.
Nuttel,” said Mrs. Sappleton. “He could only
talk about his illnesses, and then he dashed
off without a word of goodbye or apology just
as you arrived. One would think he had seen
a ghost!”
“I expect it was the spaniel,” said the
niece calmly. “He told me he had a horrible
fear of dogs. It seems he was once hunted
into a cemetery somewhere on the banks of
the Ganges River by a pack of feral dogs, and
had to spend the night in a newly dug grave
with the creatures snarling and grinning and
foaming just above him. Enough to make
anyone lose their nerve!”
Imagination at short notice was the girl’s
specialty. 
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burdened with a white coat hung over his
shoulders. A tired brown spaniel kept close at
their heels. Noiselessly they neared the
house, and then a hoarse young voice
chanted out of the dusk: “I said, Bertie, why
do you bound?”
Framton grabbed wildly at his stick and
hat. The hall door, the gravel drive, and the
front gate were dimly noted stages in his
headlong retreat. A bicyclist coming along
the road had to run into the hedge to avoid
colliding with him.
“Here we are, my dear,” said the man
with the white jacket, coming in through the
window, “fairly
window, “fairly muddy, but most of it’s dry.
Who was that who bolted out as we came
up?”
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But what does it all mean? See if you can correctly match the highfalutin (vocabulary words) from the
story with the more ordinary synonyms in the box.
unfairly
1. “The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest, an absence of mental
confident
excitement, and avoidance of anything in the nature of violent physical exercise,”
awful
announced Framton, who labored under the (delusion) ___________________
illnesses
that total strangers are hungry for the least detail of one’s sicknesses and
dangerous
(infirmities) ____________________ , their cause and cure.
mistaken belief
unsteadily
2. He made a (desperate) ___________________ but only partially successful
swampland
effort to turn the talk on to a less (ghastly) ________________ topic, he was
frantic
aware that his hostess was giving him only a fragment of her attention, and her
favorite
eyes were constantly straying past him to the open window and the lawn beyond.
lack
3. Framton Nuttel tried to say the correct something which would flatter the girl
effect
in front of him without (unduly) _________________ discounting the aunt that
was to come.
4. Here the child’s voice lost its self-possessed note and became (falteringly) __________________
human.
5. She rattled on cheerfully about the shooting and the (scarcity) ________________ of birds, and the
prospects for duck in the winter.
6. In crossing the (moor) ___________________ to their favorite snipe-shooting ground they were all
three swallowed in a (treacherous) _____________________ bit of swamp.
7. “Then you know practically nothing about my aunt?” pursued the (self-possessed) ______________
young lady.
© 2010 Mack Lewis
www.mackowiecki.com
The Open Window – Page 3 of 6
Crazy Classic Quiz – The Open Window Name: ___________________
1. Why is Framton Nuttel in Mrs. Sappleton’s house?
 A. He’s making a delivery.
 B. He is Mrs. Sappleton’s nephew from
London.
 C. He is making her acquaintance for the first
time.
 D. He is there to take Vera on a date.
5. Which of the following statements is an opinion?
 A. Framton had come to the countryside to
calm his nerves.
 B. Vera is a teenaged girl.
 C. The countryside is a good cure for nerves.
 D. Framton knew nothing about the aunt
except her name and address.
2. Why is Framton visiting the countryside?
 A. He got a new job there.
 B. He needed some peace and quiet for his
nerves.
 C. He wanted to make some new friends.
 D. He wanted to get away from his sister.
6. Why did Framton suddenly decide to leave the
Sappleton’s house?
 A. Because he was afraid of the dog.
 B. Because Vera was making fun of him.
 C. Because he became ill again from stress.
 D. Because he believed he was seeing the
ghosts of the missing hunters.
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7. Imagination at short notice was the girl’s specialty.
What does the story’s concluding sentence mean?
 A. Vera was good at making up stories in a
hurry.
 B. The whole story was a daydream.
 C. Mr. Nuttel had a vivid imagination.
 D. Practical jokes drive people crazy.
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3. Vera is the antagonist in this story. What is an
antagonist?
 A. Someone who antagonizes or opposes the
other characters.
 B. The story’s bad guy or trouble-maker.
 C. The main hostile character in the story.
 D. All of the above
4. Here the child’s voice lost its self-possessed note
and became falteringly human. What does this
sentence says about the way Vera was then speaking?
 A. She was telling a lie.
 B. She was acting as if she was about to cry.
 C. She was speaking with great confidence.
 D. She had lost her train of thought.
8. What do you think happened to Framton after he left
the Sappleton’s?
 A. He visited other people in the countryside.
 B. He reported the incident to the police.
 C. He returned to the city for a new nerve cure.
 D. He made up a plan to get even with Vera.
Write it Out!
9. Put it in your own words. According to Vera, what happened to those that had gone hunting the year before?
________________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________________
10. What is Vera’s perspective? Imagine you are Vera. Later that day how would you describe Framton to some
of your teenaged friends?
________________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________________
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© 2010 Mack Lewis
www.mackowiecki.com
The Open Window – Page 4 of 6