Helga was more than equal to the emergency, however. In the early hours of dawn she woke, or pretended to awake, cross and fretful, and roused me.
“How soundly you sleep,” she said crossly. “How can you in this abominable stuffy atmosphere? Let the window down, please.”
“I think it’s very chilly,” I said, not understanding her.
“Am I nobody?” she cried, with a stamp of the foot and a shrug of the shoulders. “Shall I do it myself?”
I put it down a little way.
“Wide open, I mean,” she said angrily.
“It’s very cold,” I protested; and indeed the cold, keen air came rushing in and made me put my collar up.
“Nonsense, I’m stifled. Wide open, I said. That’s better,” as I put it right down.
Our fellow-travellers stirred, as well they might indeed, for the temperature ran down swiftly several degrees. The man having heard Helga’s request was too polite to interfere, and suffered in silence, drawing his wraps closer round him.
But the woman had no such scruples, and after a while asked me pretty sharply to close the window.