ALGERNON: About my what?

CECILY: Your emigrating. He has gone up to buy your outfit.

ALGERNON: I certainly wouldn’t let Jack buy my outfit. He has no taste in neckties at all.

CECILY: I don’t think you will require neckties. Uncle Jack is sending you to Australia.

ALGERNON: Australia! I’d sooner die.

CECILY: Well, he said at dinner on Wednesday night, that you would have to choose between this world, the next world, and Australia.

ALGERNON: Oh, well! The accounts I have received of Australia and the next world, are not particularly encouraging. This world is good enough for me, cousin Cecily.

CECILY: Yes, but are you good enough for it?

ALGERNON: I’m afraid I’m not that. That is why I want you to reform me. You might make that your mission, if you don’t mind, cousin Cecily.

CECILY: How dare you suggest that I have a mission?

ALGERNON: I beg your pardon: but I thought that every woman had a mission of some kind, nowadays.

CECILY: Every female has! No woman. Besides, I have no time to reform you this afternoon.

ALGERNON: Well, would you mind my reforming myself this afternoon?

CECILY: It is rather Quixotic of you. But I think you should try.

ALGERNON: I will. I feel better already.

CECILY: You are looking a little worse.

ALGERNON: That is because I am hungry.

CECILY: How thoughtless of me. I should have remembered that when one is going to lead an entirely new life, one requires regular and wholesome meals. Miss Prism and I lunch at two, off some roast mutton.

ALGERNON: I fear that would be too rich for me.

CECILY: Uncle Jack, whose health has been sadly undermined by the late hours you keep in town, has been ordered by his London doctor to have pate de foie gras sandwiches and 1889 champagne at twelve. I don’t know if such invalid fare would suit you.

ALGERNON: Oh! I will be quite content with ‘89 champagne.

CECILY: I am glad to see you have such simple tastes. This is the dining-room.

ALGERNON: Thank you. Might I have a buttonhole first? I never have any appetite unless I have a buttonhole first.

CECILY: A Maréchal Niel? (Picks up scissors.)

ALGERNON: No, I’d sooner have a pink rose.

CECILY: Why? (Cuts a flower.)

ALGERNON: Because you are like a pink rose, Cousin Cecily.

CECILY: I don’t think it can be right for you to talk to me like that. Miss Prism never says such things to me.

ALGERNON: Then Miss Prism is a short-sighted old lady. (CECILY puts the rose in his buttonhole.) You are the prettiest girl I ever saw.

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.