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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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6 JACK There is no good offering a large reward now that the thing is found. [Enter Lane with the cigarette case on a salver. Algernon takes it at once. Lane goes out.] ALG I think that is rather mean of you, Ernest, I must say. [Opens case and examines it.] However, it makes no matter, for, now that I look at the inscription inside, I find that the thing isn’t yours after all. JACK Of course it’s mine. [Moving to him.] You have seen me with it a hundred times, and you have no right whatsoever to read what is written inside. It is a very ungentlemanly thing to read a private cigarette case. ALG Oh! it is absurd to have a hard-and-fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn’t. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn’t read. JACK I am quite aware of the fact, and I don’t propose to discuss modern culture. It isn’t the sort of thing one should talk of in private. I simply want my cigarette case back. ALG Yes; but this isn’t your cigarette case. This cigarette case is a present from someone of the name of Cecily, and you said you didn’t know anyone of that name. JACK Well, if you want to know, Cecily happens to be my aunt. ALG Your aunt! JACK Yes. Charming old lady she is, too. Lives at Tunbridge Wells. Just give it back to me, Algy. ALG [Retreating to back of sofa.] But why does she call herself Cecily if she is your aunt and lives at Tunbridge Wells? [Reading.] “From little Cecily with her fondest love.” JACK [Moving to sofa and kneeling upon it.] My dear fellow, what on earth is there in that? Some aunts are tall, some aunts are not tall. That is a matter that surely an aunt may be allowed to decide for herself. You seem to think that every aunt |
