I can’t help being surprised that Mr. H.B.  IRVING should have been satisfied with so impossible a character as Stephen Pryde, though I need not add that he made most effective play with the terror of an evil conscience haunted by the vengeful dead, throwing away his consonants rather recklessly in the process and receiving the plaudits of an enthusiastic audience.

I grant Mr. HACKETT freely his effects of eeriness and his sound judgment in manipulating his ghost without materialising him; and congratulate him particularly on the part of the vague American lady, most capably performed by Miss MARION LORNE.

Miss FAY COMPTON made a pretty lover and plausible clairvoyante.  Mr. SYDNEY VALENTINE’S portrait was (yes!) masterly; and Mr. TOM REYNOLDS is excellent as the confidential clerk.  Mr. HOLMAN CLARK struck me (without surprise) as slightly bored with his part of a Doctor who lost his patient in the first Act and remained as a convenient peg for the plot.  His adroit method ensures smooth playing and pulls a cast together.  T.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Servant (on hearing air-raid warning). “I SHALL STAND HERE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ’ALL, MUM, SO THAT IF A BOMB COMES IN AT THE FRONT-DOOR WE CAN GO OUT AT THE BACK.”]

* * * * *

PLAYING THE GAME.

After we had finally arranged the cricket match—­Convalescents versus the Village—­for the benefit of the Serbian Relief Fund, we remembered that early in the year the cricket-field had been selected for the site of the village potato-patch, and my favourite end of the pitch—­the one without the cross-furrow—­was now in full blossom.

As the cricket-field is the only level piece of ground in the district, the cricket committee began to lose its grip upon the situation, and were only saved from ignominious failure by the enterprise of the British Army, in this case represented by Sergeant-Major Kippy, D.C.M., who was recovering in the best of spirits from his third blighty one.

“’Ow about the Colonel’s back gardin?” he suggested.  “There’s a lovely bit o’ turf there.”

We remembered the perfect and spacious lawn, scarcely less level than a billiard-table, and, even with the Colonel busy on the East Coast, the committee were unanimously adverse to the suggestion.  But Kippy, born within hail of a Kentish cricket-field, was not to be denied, and, after all, one cannot haggle about a mere garden with someone who was with the first battalions over the Messines Ridge.

Thus the affair was taken out of our hands, and when the day arrived we pitched the stumps where Kippy, giving due consideration to the Colonel’s foliage, thought the light was most advantageous.

The Village won the toss, and old Tom Pratt took guard and proceeded to dig himself in by making what he termed his “block-hole.”  I visualised the choleric blue eye of the Colonel and shuddered.