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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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50 ALG When I am in trouble, eating is the only thing that consoles me. Indeed, when I am in really great trouble, as anyone who knows me intimately will tell you, I refuse everything except food and drink. At the present moment I am eating muffins because I am unhappy. Besides, I am particularly fond of muffins. [Rising.] JACK [Rising.] Well, that is no reason why you should eat them all in that greedy way. [Takes muffins from Algernon.] ALG [Offering tea-cake.] I wish you would have tea-cake instead. I don’t like tea-cake. JACK Good Heavens! I suppose a man may eat his own muffins in his own garden. ALG But you have just said it was perfectly heartless to eat muffins. JACK I said it was perfectly heartless of you, under the circumstances. That is a very different thing. ALG That may be. But the muffins are the same. [He seizes the muffin-dish from Jack.] JACK Algy, I wish to goodness you would go. ALG You can’t possibly ask me to go without having some dinner. It’s absurd. I never go without my dinner. No one ever does, except vegetarians and people like that. Besides I have just made arrangements with Dr. Chasuble, to be christened at a quarter to six under the name of Ernest. JACK My dear fellow, the sooner you give up that nonsense the better. I made arrangements this morning with Dr. Chasuble to be christened myself at 5:30, and I naturally will take the name of Ernest. Gwendolen would wish it. We can’t both be christened Ernest. It’s absurd. Besides, I have a perfect right to be christened if I like. There is no evidence at all that I ever have been christened by anybody. I should think it extremely probable I never was, and so does Dr. Chasuble. It is entirely different in your case. You have been christened already. ALG Yes, but I have not been christened for years. |
