CECILY (to herself): I don’t think Miss Prism would like my being alone with him. So I had better send for him at once, before she comes in. (To MERRIMAN.) Ask Mr. Ernest Worthing to come here. I suppose you had better talk to the housekeeper about a room for him.

MERRIMAN: I have already sent his luggage up to the Blue Room, Miss: next to Mr. Worthing’s own room.

CECILY: Oh! That is all right.

MERRIMAN goes off.

I have never met any really wicked person before. I feel rather frightened. I am so afraid he will look just like everyone else.

Enter ALGERNON, very gay and debonair.

He does!

ALGERNON (raising his hat): You are my little cousin Cecily, I’m sure.

CECILY: You are under some strange mistake. I am not little. In fact, I believe I am more than usually tall for my age. (ALGERNON is rather taken aback.) But I am your cousin Cecily. You, I see from your card, are Uncle Jack’s brother, my cousin Ernest, my wicked cousin Ernest.

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. You have made Uncle Jack believe that you are very bad. I hope that you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.

ALGERNON (looks at her in amazement): Oh! Of course I have been rather reckless.

CECILY: I am glad to hear it.

ALGERNON: In fact, now you mention the subject, I have been very bad in my own small way.

CECILY: I don’t think you should be so proud of that, though I am sure it must have been very pleasant.

ALGERNON: It is much pleasanter being here with you.

CECILY: I can’t understand how you are here at all. Uncle Jack telegraphed to you yesterday at the Albany that he would see you for the last time at six o’clock. He lets me read all the telegrams he sends you. I know some of them by heart.

ALGERNON: The fact is I didn’t get the telegram till it was too late. Then I missed him at the Club, and the Hall Porter said he thought he had come down here. So, of course, I followed as I knew he wanted to see me.

CECILY: He won’t be back till Monday afternoon.

ALGERNON: That is a great disappointment. I am obliged to go up by the first train on Monday morning. I have a business appointment that I am anxious…to miss!

CECILY: Couldn’t you miss it anywhere but in London?

ALGERNON: No: the appointment is in London.

CECILY: Well, I know, of course, how important it is not to keep a business engagement, if one wants to retain any sense of the beauty of life, but still I think you had better wait till Uncle Jack arrives. I know he wants to speak to you about your emigrating.