Published in 1914, Saki's "The Lumber Room" is a comedic short story about Nicholas, a mischievous upper-class English boy who uses his cleverness and imagination to subvert his aunt's authority.
After putting a frog in his breakfast, Nicholas has to stay home while his cousins and brother are treated to a trip to the beach at Jagborough. As additional punishment, Nicholas's aunt forbids him entry to the gooseberry garden. Nicholas pretends to try to gain access by acting as if he is heading for the doors that lead to the garden. But while his aunt keeps watch outside, Nicholas lets himself into the locked lumber room—a storeroom of all the furniture and delicate objects his aunt hides from the children. In the room, Nicholas lets his imagination run wild as he marvels at a book of illustrated birds and an elaborate tapestry of a hunter who has just fired an arrow at a deer; wolves lurk in the background. Meanwhile, his aunt falls into a rain-water tank while searching for Nicholas in a thicket. She calls for Nicholas and sends him to fetch a ladder, but Nicholas insists he isn't allowed into the gooseberry garden. He pretends her voice sounds more like the Devil's than his aunt's and tells her he won't be tempted to disobey. That evening, the other children are miserable because the tide was too high at the beach. Nicholas's aunt is humiliated about the water tank mishap. Nicholas is the only happy one as he contentedly thinks about the tapestry, wondering if the hunter and his dogs will escape the approaching wolves.
Exploring themes of mischief, obedience, and defiance, "The Lumber Room" shows how the authoritarian attitude of the aunt provokes Nicholas to use his imagination and cleverness. Throughout the story, Saki returns to the motif of Nicholas outsmarting his aunt by turning her own logic against her. Ultimately, despite her attempts at rigid control and surveillance, the aunt fails to restrict Nicholas's freedom. Having himself been raised by his overly strict aunts, Saki (the pen name of H. H. Munro) likely modelled Nicholas's combative relationship with his aunt on his own boyhood.
