Vera, the "self-possessed" teenage girl who causes all the excitement in Saki's "The Open Window," and the anonymous twelve-year-old girl who narrates Roald Dahl's "The Umbrella Man," are both alike in being secretly mischievous and secretly amused. Their laughter is internalized. Somehow the fact that both these characters are young girls seems to soften the stories and make Vera and her counterpart more innocent. What would "The Open Window" have been like if the perpetrator of the practical joke on Framton Nuttel had been a fifteen-year-old boy? Perhaps it would have seemed more cruel, for some reason. At the time, boys were thought to be more cruel than girls. The same question applies to the girl-narrator of "The Umbrella Man." How would the story be different if the narrator were a twelve-year-old boy instead instead of a twelve-year-old girl? Both Saki and Roald Dahl chose to feature girls in their respective roles for some artistic purpose. In both cases the girls seem completely suited to the stories in which they appear.