MISS PRISM. Child, you know how anxious your guardian is that you should improve yourself in every way. He laid particular stress on your German, as he was leaving for town yesterday. Indeed, he always lays stress on your German when he is leaving for town. CECILY. Dear Uncle Jack is so very serious! Sometimes he is so serious that I think he cannot be quite well.
CECILY. I have never met any really wicked person before. I feel rather frightened. I am so afraid he will look just like every one else. [EnterALGERNON, very gay and debonair]. He does!
ALGERNON. Oh! I am not really wicked at all, cousin Cecily. You mustn’t think that I am wicked. CECILY. If you are not, then you have certainly been deceiving us all in a very inexcusable manner. I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.
CECILY. Miss Prism says that all good looks are a snare. ALGERNON. They are a snare that every sensible man would like to be caught in. CECILY. Oh, I don’t think I would care to catch a sensible man. I shouldn’t know what to talk to him about.
JACK. My brother is in the dining-room? I don’t know what it all means. I think it is perfectly absurd.
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