First Plays

Act I: [Scene. — The hall of SIR JAMES FARRINGDON'S house in the country.]

[It is a large and pleasantly unofficial sort of room, used as a meeting-place rather than a resting place. To be in it pledges you to nothing; whereas in the billiard-room you are presumably pledged to billiards. The French windows at the back open on to lawns; the door on the right at the back will take you into the outer hall; the door on the left leads to the servants' quarters; the door on the right in front will disclose other inhabited rooms to you. An oak gallery runs round two sides of the hall and descends in broad and gentle stairs down the right side of it. Four stairs from the bottom it turns round at right angles and deposits you fairly in the hall. Entering in this way, you will see immediately opposite to you the large open fireplace occupied by a pile of unlit logs—for it is summer. There is a chair on each side of the fireplace, but turned now away from it. In the left centre of the hall there is a gate-legged table to which trays with drinks on them, have a habit of finding their way; it is supported on each side by a coffin-stool. A sofa, which will take two strangers comfortably and three friends less comfortably, comes out at right angles to the staircase, but leaves plenty of space between itself and the stool on its side of the table. Beneath the window on the left of the French windows is a small table on which letters and papers are put; beneath the window on the other side is a writing-table. The walls are decorated impartially with heads of wild animals and of Farringdons.]