Each time the poor girl opened the door a flame came in and nearly burned her hair off.

It seemed to have been waiting for her.
"Thank God!" said the lady, hastily wrapping the child in a sheet, "that I was brought up a wire walker." Without a moment's hesitation she opened the attic window and took the nearest telegraph wire to the opposite side of the street.
In the same way, apparently, the hero of the popular novel, finding himself stranded in a foreign land, suddenly recollects that once upon a time he met a refugee, and at once begins to talk.

I have met refugees myself.

The only thing they have ever taught me is not to leave my brandy flask about.
And, finally, because I don't believe he's true.
I don't believe in these heroes and heroines that cannot keep quiet in a foreign language they have taught themselves in an old-world library.

My fixed idea is that they muddle along like the rest of us, surprised that so few people understand them, begging everyone they meet not to talk so quickly.