ALGERNON: Yes, but it’s hereditary, my dear fellow. It’s a sort of thing that runs in families.

JACK: Good heavens! Then I certainly won’t choose that. What can I say?

ALGERNON: Oh! Say influenza.

JACK: Oh, no! that wouldn’t sound probable at all. Far too many people have had it.

ALGERNON: Oh well! Say anything you choose. Say a severe chill. That’s all right.

JACK: You are sure a severe chill isn’t hereditary, or anything dreadful of that kind?

ALGERNON: Of course it isn’t.

JACK: Very well then. That is settled.

ALGERNON: But I thought you said that…Miss Cardew was a little too much interested in your poor brother Ernest? Won’t she feel his loss a good deal?

JACK: Oh! that is all right. Cecily is not a silly romantic girl, I am glad to say. She has got a capital appetite, goes long walks, and pays no attention at all to her lessons.

ALGERNON: I would rather like to see Cecily.

JACK: I will take very good care you never do. And you are not to speak of her as Cecily.

ALGERNON: Ah! I believe she is plain. Yes: I know perfectly well what she is like. She is one of those dull, intellectual girls one meets all over the place. Girls who have got large minds and large feet. I am sure she is more than usually plain, and I expect she is about thirty-nine, and looks it.

JACK: She happens to be excessively pretty, and she is only just eighteen.

ALGERNON: Have you told Gwendolen yet that you have an excessively pretty ward who is only eighteen?

JACK: Oh! one doesn’t blurt these things out to people. Life is a question of tact. One leads up to the thing gradually. Cecily and Gwendolen are perfectly certain to be extremely great friends. I’ll bet you anything you like that half an hour after they have met, they will be calling each other sister.

ALGERNON: Women only do that when they have called each other a lot of other things first. Now, my dear boy, if we want to get a good table at Willis’s, we really must go and dress. Do you know it is nearly seven?

JACK: (irritably): Oh! it always is nearly seven.

ALGERNON: Well, I’m hungry.

JACK: I never knew you when you weren’t…However, all right. I’ll go round to the Albany and meet you at Willis’s at eight. You can call for me on your way, if you like.

ALGERNON: What shall we do after dinner? Go to a theatre?

JACK: Oh, no! I loathe listening.

ALGERNON: Well, let us go to the Club?

JACK: Oh, no! I hate talking.

ALGERNON: Well, we might trot round to the Empire at ten?

JACK: Oh, no! I can’t bear looking at things. It is so silly.

ALGERNON: Well, what shall we do?

JACK: Nothing!

ALGERNON: It is awfully hard work doing nothing. However, I don’t mind hard work where there is no definite object of any kind…