|
Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
||||
 |
||||
|
Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
||||
|
|
||||
|
33 MISS PRI Cecily! CHAS My child! my child! [Cecily goes towards Jack; he kisses her brow in a melancholy manner.] CEC What is the matter, Uncle Jack? Do look happy! You look as if you had a toothache, and I have got such a surprise for you. Who do you think is in the dining-room? Your brother! JACK Who? CEC Your brother Ernest. He arrived about half an hour ago. JACK What nonsense! I haven’t got a brother! CEC Oh, don’t say that. However badly he may have behaved to you in the past he is still your brother. You couldn’t be so heartless as to disown him. I’ll tell him to come out. And you will shake hands with him, won’t you, Uncle Jack? [Runs back into the house.] CHAS These are very joyful tidings. MISS PRI After we had all been resigned to his loss, his sudden return seems me peculiarly distressing. JACK My brother is in the dining-room? I don’t know what it all means. I think it is perfectly absurd. [Enter Algernon and Cecily hand in hand. They come slowly up to Jack.] JACK Good Heavens! Motions Algernon away.] ALG Brother John, I have come down from town to tell you that I am very sorry for all the trouble I have given you, and that I intend to lead a better life in the future. [Jack glares at him and does not take his hand.] CEC Uncle Jack, you are not going to refuse your own brother’s hand? JACK Nothing will induce me to take his hand. I think his coming down here disgraceful. He knows perfectly well why. CEC Uncle Jack, do be nice. There is some good in one everyone. Ernest has been telling me about his poor invalid friend Mr. Bunbury whom he goes to visit so often. And surely there must be much good in one who is kind to an invalid, and leaves the pleasures of London to sit by a bed of pain. JACK Oh! he has been talking about Bunbury, has he? CEC Yes, he has told me all about poor Mr. Bunbury, and his terrible state of health. |
