Algernon: I certainly won’t leave you so long as you are in mourning. It would be most unfriendly. If I were in mourning you would stay with me, I suppose. I should think it very unkind if you didn’t.

Jack: Well, will you go if I change my clothes?

Algernon: Yes, if you are not too long. I never saw anybody take so long to dress, and with such little result.

Jack: Well, at any rate, that is better than being always over-dressed as you are.

Algernon: If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.

Jack: Your vanity is ridiculous, your conduct an outrage, and your presence in my garden utterly absurd. However, you have got to catch the four-five, and I hope you will have a pleasant journey back to town. This Bunburying, as you call it, has not been a great success for you.

[Goes into the house.]

Algernon: I think it has been a great success. I’m in love with Cecily, and that is everything.

[Enter Cecily at the back of the garden. She picks up the can and begins to water the flowers.] But I must see her before I go, and make arrangements for another Bunbury. Ah, there she is.

Cecily: Oh, I merely came back to water the roses. I thought you were with Uncle Jack.

Algernon: He’s gone to order the dog-cart for me.

Cecily: Oh, is he going to take you for a nice drive?

Algernon: He’s going to send me away.

Cecily: Then have we got to part?

Algernon: I am afraid so. It’s a very painful parting.

Cecily: It is always painful to part from people whom one has known for a very brief space of time. The absence of old friends one can endure with equanimity. But even a momentary separation from anyone to whom one has just been introduced is almost unbearable.

Algernon: Thank you.

[Enter Merriman.]

Merriman: The dog-cart is at the door, sir. [Algernon looks appealingly at Cecily.]

Cecily: It can wait, Merriman for . . . five minutes.

Merriman: Yes, Miss. [Exit Merriman.]

Algernon: I hope, Cecily, I shall not offend you if I state quite frankly and openly that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection.

Cecily: I think your frankness does you great credit, Ernest. If you will allow me, I will copy your remarks into my diary. [Goes over to table and begins writing in diary.]

Algernon: Do you really keep a diary? I’d give anything to look at it. May I?

Cecily: Oh no. [Puts her hand over it.] You see, it is simply a very young girl’s record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publication. When it appears in volume form I hope you will order a copy. But pray, Ernest, don’t stop. I delight in taking down from dictation. I have reached ‘absolute perfection’. You can go on. I am quite ready for more.

Algernon: [Somewhat taken aback.] Ahem! Ahem!

Cecily: Oh, don’t cough, Ernest. When one is dictating one should speak fluently and not cough. Besides, I don’t know how to spell a cough. [Writes as Algernon speaks.]

Algernon: [Speaking very rapidly.