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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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10 JACK [Sententiously.] That, my dear young friend, is the theory that the corrupt French Drama has been propounding for the last fifty years. ALG Yes; and that the happy English home has proved in half the time. JACK For Heaven’s sake, don’t try to be cynical. It’s perfectly easy to he cynical. ALG My dear fellow, it isn’t easy to be anything now-a-days. There’s such a lot of beastly competition about. [The sound of an electric bell is heard.] Ah! that must be Aunt Augusta. Only relatives, or creditors, ever ring in that Wagnerian manner. Now, if I get her out of the way for ten minutes, so that you can have an opportunity for proposing to Gwendolen, may I dine with you to-night at Willis’s? JACK I suppose so, if you want to. ALG Yes, but you must be serious about it. I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them. [Enter Lane.] LANE Lady Bracknell and Miss Fairfax. [Algernon goes forward to meet them. Enter Lady Bracknell and Gwendolen.] LADY BRA Good afternoon, dear Algernon. I hope you are behaving very well. ALG I’m feeling very well, Aunt Augusta. LADY BRA That’s not quite the same thing. In fact the two things rarely go together. [Sees Jack and bows to him with icy coldness.] ALG [To Gwendolen.] Dear me, you are smart! GWEN I am always smart! Aren’t I, Mr. Worthing? JACK You are quite perfect, Miss Fairfax. GWEN Oh! I hope I am not that. It would leave no room for developments, and I intend to develop in many directions. [Gwendolen and Jack sit down together in the corner.] LADY BRA I’m sorry if we are a little late, Algernon, but I was obliged to call on dear Lady Harbury. I hadn’t been there since her poor husband’s death. I never saw a woman so altered; she looks quite twenty years |
