k.

Jack. I haven't asked you to dine with me anywhere to-night.

Algernon. I know. You are absurdly careless about sending out
invitations. It is very foolish of you. Nothing annoys people so much
as not receiving invitations.

Jack. You had much better dine with your Aunt Augusta.

Algernon. I haven't the smallest intention of doing anything of the
kind. To begin with, I dined there on Monday, and once a week is quite
enough to dine with one's own relations. In the second place, whenever I
do dine there I am always treated as a member of the family, and sent
down with either no woman at all, or two. In the third place, I know
perfectly well whom she will place me next to, to-night. She will place
me next Mary Farquhar, who always flirts with her own husband across the
dinner-table. That is not very pleasant. Indeed, it is not even decent
. . . and that sort of thing is enormously on the increase. The amount
of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly
scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one's clean linen in
public. Besides, now that I know you to be a confirmed Bunburyist I
naturally want to talk to you about Bunburying. I want to tell you the
rules.

Jack. I'm not a Bunburyist at all. If Gwendolen accepts me, I am going
to kill my brother, indeed I think I'll kill him in any case. Cecily is
a little too much interested in him. It is rather a bore. So I am going
to get rid of Ernest. And I strongly advise you to do the same with Mr.
. . . with your invalid friend who has the absurd name.

Algernon. Nothing will induce me to part with Bunbury, and if you ever
get married, which seems to me extremely problematic, you will be very
glad to know Bunbury. A man who marries without knowing Bunbury has a
very tedious time of it.

Jack. That is nonsense. If I marry a charming girl like Gwendolen, and
she is the only girl I ever saw in my life that I would marry, I
certainly won't want to know Bunbury.

Algernon. Then your wife will. You don't seem to realise, that in
married life three is company and two is none.

Jack. [Sententiously.] That, my dear young friend, is the theory that
the corrupt French Drama has been propounding for the last fifty years.

Algernon. Yes; and that the happy English home has proved in half the
time.

Jack. For heaven's sake, don't try to be cynical. It's perfectly easy
to be cynical.

Algernon. My dear fellow, it