CECILY.
With pleasure!
GWENDOLEN.
And you will always call me Gwendolen, won’t you?
CECILY.
If you wish.
GWENDOLEN.
Then that is all quite settled, is it not?
CECILY.
I hope so. [A pause. They both sit down together.]
GWENDOLEN.
Perhaps this might be a favourable opportunity for my mentioning who I am. My father is Lord Bracknell. You have never heard of papa, I suppose?
CECILY.
I don’t think so.
GWENDOLEN.
Outside the family circle, papa, I am glad to say, is entirely unknown. I think that is quite as it should be. The home seems to me to be the proper sphere for the man. And certainly once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties he becomes painfully effeminate, does he not? And I don’t like that. It makes men so very attractive. Cecily, mamma, whose views on education are remarkably strict, has brought me up to be extremely short-sighted; it is part of her system; so do you mind my looking at you through my glasses?
CECILY.
Oh! not at all, Gwendolen. I am very fond of being looked at.
GWENDOLEN.
[After examining Cecily carefully through a lorgnette.] You are here on a short visit, I suppose.