THE STORY: Most people have inherited property, but we never heard of anyone’s inheriting a ghost. Nancy Willard did. This attractive girl, who works for a publisher, is engaged to Parker Burnett. When Amelia Bullock, Nancy’s landlady and owner of a delightful old house, dies at the age of 103, Nancy learns that she has been left something named Na-thaniel Coombes. Nathaniel is a young and handsome Revolutionary soldier who had been ambushed and killed in 1776 and is now doomed to an earth-bound existence as a ghost in the neighborhood of Nancy’s apartment. He cannot get into heaven because he has failed to deliver a message to George Washington. It was all the fault of a pretty bar-maid who caused him to forget his duty. Nancy, inci-dentally, is the only living being who can see Nathaniel. When Charley Stewart, an attractive young newspaperman, comes to Nancy’s apartment seeking data on the late Miss Bullock, Nancy finds her life even more complicated, since there are now three young men (if we include Nathaniel) interested in her. It is Charley, of course, who learns how to exorcise the ghost and win Nancy away from Parker. But it is Nathaniel who ultimately enables Nancy to choose the right husband, and on his accomplishing this he gains admittance to heaven at long last.
A list of slight changes is included in the text, making the play adaptable to every group.
