Pygmalion 3

Pygmalion 3

HIGGINS [rising, and going over to Pickering] Pickering: if we were to take this man in hand for three months, he could choose between a seat in the Cabinet and a popular pulpit in Wales. PICKERING. What do you say to that, Doolittle? DOOLITTLE. Not me, Governor, thank you kindly. I've heard all the preachers and all the prime ministers--for I'm a thinking man and game for politics or religion or social reform same as all the other amusements--and I tell you it's a dog's life anyway you look at it. Undeserving poverty is my line. Taking one station in society with another, it's--it's--well, it's the only one that has any ginger in it, to my taste. HIGGINS. I suppose we must give him a fiver. PICKERING. He'll make a bad use of it, I'm afraid. DOOLITTLE. Not me, Governor, so help me I won't. Don't you be afraid that I'll save it and spare it and live idle on it. There won't be a penny of it left by Monday: I'll have to go to work same as if I'd never had it. It won't pauperize me, you bet. Just one good spree for myself and the missus, giving pleasure to ourselves and employment to others, and satisfaction to you to think it's not been throwed away. You couldn't spend it better. HIGGINS [taking out his pocket book and coming between Doolittle and the piano] This is irresistible. Let's give him ten. [He offers two notes to the dustman]. DOOLITTLE. No, Governor. She wouldn't have the heart to spend ten; and perhaps I shouldn't neither. Ten pounds is a lot of money: it makes a man feel prudent like; and then goodbye to happiness. You give me what I ask you, Governor: not a penny more, and not a penny less. PICKERING. Why don't you marry that missus of yours? I rather draw the line at encouraging that sort of immorality. DOOLITTLE. Tell her so, Governor: tell her so. I'm willing. It's me that suffers by it. I've no hold on her. I got to be agreeable to her. I got to give her presents. I got to buy her clothes something sinful. I'm a slave to that woman, Governor, just because I'm not her lawful husband. And she knows it too. Catch her marrying me! Take my advice, Governor: marry Eliza while she's young and don't know no better. If you don't you'll be sorry for it after. If you do, she'll be sorry for it after; but better you than her, because you're a man, and she's only a woman and don't know how to be happy anyhow. HIGGINS. Pickering: if we listen to this man another minute, we shall have no convictions left. [To Doolittle] Five pounds I think you said. DOOLITTLE. Thank you kindly, Governor. HIGGINS. You're sure you won't take ten? DOOLITTLE. Not now. Another time, Governor. HIGGINS [handing him a five-pound note] Here you are. DOOLITTLE. Thank you, Governor. Good morning. [He hurries to the door, anxious to get away with his booty. When he opens it he is confronted with a dainty and exquisitely clean young Japanese lady in a simple blue cotton kimono printed cunningly with small white jasmine blossoms. Mrs. Pearce is with her. He gets out of her way deferentially and apologizes]. Beg pardon, miss. THE JAPANESE LADY. Garn! Don't you know your own daughter?   DOOLITTLE   {exclaiming  Bly me! it's Eliza!   HIGGINS     {simul-      What's that! This!   PICKERING   {taneously   By Jove! LIZA. Don't I look silly? HIGGINS. Silly? MRS. PEARCE [at the door] Now, Mr. Higgins, please don't say anything to make the girl conceited about herself. HIGGINS [conscientiously] Oh! Quite right, Mrs. Pearce. [To Eliza] Yes: damned silly. MRS. PEARCE. Please, sir. HIGGINS [correcting himself] I mean extremely silly. LIZA. I should look all right with my hat on. [She takes up her hat; puts it on; and walks across the room to the fireplace with a fashionable air]. HIGGINS. A new fashion, by George! And it ought to look horrible! DOOLITTLE [with fatherly pride] Well, I never thought she'd clean up as good looking as that, Governor. She's a credit to me, ain't she? LIZA. I tell you, it's easy to clean up here. Hot and cold water on tap, just as much as you like, there is. Woolly towels, there is; and a towel horse so hot, it burns your fingers. Soft brushes to scrub yourself, and a wooden bowl of soap smelling like primroses. Now I know why ladies is so clean. Washing's a treat for them. Wish they saw what it is for the like of me! HIGGINS. I'm glad the bath-room met with your approval. LIZA. It didn't: not all of it; and I don't care who hears me say it. Mrs. Pearce knows. HIGGINS. What was wrong, Mrs. Pearce? MRS. PEARCE [blandly] Oh, nothing, sir. It doesn't matter. LIZA. I had a good mind to break it. I didn't know which way to look. But I hung a towel over it, I did. HIGGINS. Over what? MRS. PEARCE. Over the looking-glass, sir. HIGGINS. Doolittle: you have brought your daughter up too strictly. DOOLITTLE. Me! I never brought her up at all, except to give her a lick of a strap now and again. Don't put it on me, Governor. She ain't accustomed to it, you see: that's all. But she'll soon pick up your free-and-easy ways. LIZA. I'm a good girl, I am; and I won't pick up no free and easy ways. HIGGINS. Eliza: if you say again that you're a good girl, your father shall take you home. LIZA. Not him. You don't know my father. All he come here for was to touch you for some money to get drunk on. DOOLITTLE. Well, what else would I want money for? To put into the plate in church, I suppose. [She puts out her tongue at him. He is so incensed by this that Pickering presently finds it necessary to step between them]. Don't you give me none of your lip; and don't let me hear you giving this gentleman any of it neither, or you'll hear from me about it. See? HIGGINS. Have you any further advice to give her before you go, Doolittle? Your blessing, for instance. DOOLITTLE. No, Governor: I ain't such a mug as to put up my children to all I know myself. Hard enough to hold them in without that. If you want Eliza's mind improved, Governor, you do it yourself with a strap. So long, gentlemen. [He turns to go]. HIGGINS [impressively] Stop. You'll come regularly to see your daughter. It's your duty, you know. My brother is a clergyman; and he could help you in your talks with her. DOOLITTLE [evasively] Certainly. I'll come, Governor. Not just this week, because I have a job at a distance. But later on you may depend on me. Afternoon, gentlemen. Afternoon, ma'am. [He takes off his hat to Mrs. Pearce, who disdains the salutation and goes out. He winks at Higgins, thinking him probably a fellow sufferer from Mrs. Pearce's difficult disposition, and follows her]. LIZA. Don't you believe the old liar. He'd as soon you set a bull-dog on him as a clergyman. You won't see him again in a hurry. HIGGINS. I don't want to, Eliza. Do you? LIZA. Not me. I don't want never to see him again, I don't. He's a disgrace to me, he is, collecting dust, instead of working at his trade. PICKERING. What is his trade, Eliza? LIZA. Talking money out of other people's pockets into his own. His proper trade's a navvy; and he works at it sometimes too--for exercise--and earns good money at it. Ain't you going to call me Miss Doolittle any more? PICKERING. I beg your pardon, Miss Doolittle. It was a slip of the tongue. LIZA. Oh, I don't mind; only it sounded so genteel. I should just like to take a taxi to the corner of Tottenham Court Road and get out there and tell it to wait for me, just to put the girls in their place a bit. I wouldn't speak to them, you know. PICKERING. Better wait til we get you something really fashionable. HIGGINS. Besides, you shouldn't cut your old friends now that you have risen in the world. That's what we call snobbery. LIZA. You don't call the like of them my friends now, I should hope. They've took it out of me often enough with their ridicule when they had the chance; and now I mean to get a bit of my own back. But if I'm to have fashionable clothes, I'll wait. I should like to have some. Mrs. Pearce says you're going to give me some to wear in bed at night different to what I wear in the daytime; but it do seem a waste of money when you could get something to show. Besides, I never could fancy changing into cold things on a winter night. MRS. PEARCE [coming back] Now, Eliza. The new things have come for you to try on. LIZA. Ah--ow--oo--ooh! [She rushes out]. MRS. PEARCE [following her] Oh, don't rush about like that, girl [She shuts the door behind her]. HIGGINS. Pickering: we have taken on a stiff job. PICKERING [with conviction] Higgins: we have. ACT III It is Mrs. Higgins's at-home day. Nobody has yet arrived. Her drawing-room, in a flat on Chelsea embankment, has three windows looking on the river; and the ceiling is not so lofty as it would be in an older house of the same pretension. The windows are open, giving access to a balcony with flowers in pots. If you stand with your face to the windows, you have the fireplace on your left and the door in the right-hand wall close to the corner nearest the windows. Mrs. Higgins was brought up on Morris and Burne Jones; and her room, which is very unlike her son's room in Wimpole Street, is not crowded with furniture and little tables and nicknacks. In the middle of the room there is a big ottoman; and this, with the carpet, the Morris wall-papers, and the Morris chintz window curtains and brocade covers of the ottoman and its cushions, supply all the ornament, and are much too handsome to be hidden by odds and ends of useless things. A few good oil-paintings from the exhibitions in the Grosvenor Gallery thirty years ago (the Burne Jones, not the Whistler side of them) are on the walls. The only landscape is a Cecil Lawson on the scale of a Rubens. There is a portrait of Mrs. Higgins as she was when she defied fashion in her youth in one of the beautiful Rossettian costumes which, when caricatured by people who did not understand, led to the absurdities of popular estheticism in the eighteen-seventies. In the corner diagonally opposite the door Mrs. Higgins, now over sixty and long past taking the trouble to dress out of the fashion, sits writing at an elegantly simple writing-table with a bell button within reach of her hand. There is a Chippendale chair further back in the room between her and the window nearest her side. At the other side of the room, further forward, is an Elizabethan chair roughly carved in the taste of Inigo Jones. On the same side a piano in a decorated case. The corner between the fireplace and the window is occupied by a divan cushioned in Morris chintz. It is between four and five in the afternoon. The door is opened violently; and Higgins enters with his hat on. MRS. HIGGINS [dismayed] Henry [scolding him]! What are you doing here to-day? It is my at home day: you promised not to come. [As he bends to kiss her, she takes his hat off, and presents it to him]. HIGGINS. Oh bother! [He throws the hat down on the table]. MRS. HIGGINS. Go home at once. HIGGINS [kissing her] I know, mother. I came on purpose. MRS. HIGGINS. But you mustn't. I'm serious, Henry. You offend all my friends: they stop coming whenever they meet you. HIGGINS. Nonsense! I know I have no small talk; but people don't mind. [He sits on the settee]. MRS. HIGGINS. Oh! don't they? Small talk indeed! What about your large talk? Really, dear, you mustn't stay. HIGGINS. I must. I've a job for you. A phonetic job. MRS. HIGGINS. No use, dear. I'm sorry; but I can't get round your vowels; and though I like to get pretty postcards in your patent shorthand, I always have to read the copies in ordinary writing you so thoughtfully send me. HIGGINS. Well, this isn't a phonetic job. MRS. HIGGINS. You said it was. HIGGINS. Not your part of it. I've picked up a girl. MRS. HIGGINS. Does that mean that some girl has picked you up? HIGGINS. Not at all. I don't mean a love affair. MRS. HIGGINS. What a pity! HIGGINS. Why? MRS. HIGGINS. Well, you never fall in love with anyone under forty-five. When will you discover that there are some rather nice-looking young women about? HIGGINS. Oh, I can't be bothered with young women. My idea of a loveable woman is something as like you as possible. I shall never get into the way of seriously liking young women: some habits lie too deep to be changed. [Rising abruptly and walking about, jingling his money and his keys in his trouser pockets] Besides, they're all idiots. MRS. HIGGINS. Do you know what you would do if you really loved me, Henry? HIGGINS. Oh bother! What? Marry, I suppose? MRS. HIGGINS. No. Stop fidgeting and take your hands out of your pockets. [With a gesture of despair, he obeys and sits down again]. That's a good boy. Now tell me about the girl. HIGGINS. She's coming to see you. MRS. HIGGINS. I don't remember asking her. HIGGINS. You didn't. I asked her. If you'd known her you wouldn't have asked her. MRS. HIGGINS. Indeed! Why? HIGGINS. Well, it's like this. She's a common flower girl. I picked her off the kerbstone. MRS. HIGGINS. And invited her to my at-home! HIGGINS [rising and coming to her to coax her] Oh, that'll be all right. I've taught her to speak properly; and she has strict orders as to her behavior. She's to keep to two subjects: the weather and everybody's health--Fine day and How do you do, you know--and not to let herself go on things in general. That will be safe. MRS. HIGGINS. Safe! To talk about our health! about our insides! perhaps about our outsides! How could you be so silly, Henry? HIGGINS [impatiently] Well, she must talk about something. [He controls himself and sits down again]. Oh, she'll be all right: don't you fuss. Pickering is in it with me. I've a sort of bet on that I'll pass her off as a duchess in six months. I started on her some months ago; and she's getting on like a house on fire. I shall win my bet. She has a quick ear; and she's been easier to teach than my middle-class pupils because she's had to learn a complete new language. She talks English almost as you talk French. MRS. HIGGINS. That's satisfactory, at all events. HIGGINS. Well, it is and it isn't. MRS. HIGGINS. What does that mean? HIGGINS. You see, I've got her pronunciation all right; but you have to consider not only how a girl pronounces, but what she pronounces; and that's where-- They are interrupted by the parlor-maid, announcing guests. THE PARLOR-MAID. Mrs. and Miss Eynsford Hill. [She withdraws]. HIGGINS. Oh Lord! [He rises; snatches his hat from the table; and makes for the door; but before he reaches it his mother introduces him]. Mrs. and Miss Eynsford Hill are the mother and daughter who sheltered from the rain in Covent Garden. The mother is well bred, quiet, and has the habitual anxiety of straitened means. The daughter has acquired a gay air of being very much at home in society: the bravado of genteel poverty. MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [to Mrs. Higgins] How do you do? [They shake hands]. MISS EYNSFORD HILL. How d'you do? [She shakes]. MRS. HIGGINS [introducing] My son Henry. MRS. EYNSFORD HILL. Your celebrated son! I have so longed to meet you, Professor Higgins. HIGGINS [glumly, making no movement in her direction] Delighted. [He backs against the piano and bows brusquely]. Miss EYNSFORD HILL [going to him with confident familiarity] How do you do? HIGGINS [staring at her] I've seen you before somewhere. I haven't the ghost of a notion where; but I've heard your voice. [Drearily] It doesn't matter. You'd better sit down. MRS. HIGGINS. I'm sorry to say that my celebrated son has no manners. You mustn't mind him. MISS EYNSFORD HILL [gaily] I don't. [She sits in the Elizabethan chair]. MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [a little bewildered] Not at all. [She sits on the ottoman between her daughter and Mrs. Higgins, who has turned her chair away from the writing-table]. HIGGINS. Oh, have I been rude? I didn't mean to be. [He goes to the central window, through which, with his back to the company, he contemplates the river and the flowers in Battersea Park on the opposite bank as if they were a frozen dessert.] The parlor-maid returns, ushering in Pickering. THE PARLOR-MAID. Colonel Pickering [She withdraws]. PICKERING. How do you do, Mrs. Higgins? MRS. HIGGINS. So glad you've come. Do you know Mrs. Eynsford Hill--Miss Eynsford Hill? [Exchange of bows. The Colonel brings the Chippendale chair a little forward between Mrs. Hill and Mrs. Higgins, and sits down]. PICKERING. Has Henry told you what we've come for? HIGGINS [over his shoulder] We were interrupted: damn it! MRS. HIGGINS. Oh Henry, Henry, really! MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [half rising] Are we in the way? MRS. HIGGINS [rising and making her sit down again] No, no. You couldn't have come more fortunately: we want you to meet a friend of ours. HIGGINS [turning hopefully] Yes, by George! We want two or three people. You'll do as well as anybody else. The parlor-maid returns, ushering Freddy. THE PARLOR-MAID. Mr. Eynsford Hill. HIGGINS [almost audibly, past endurance] God of Heaven! another of them. FREDDY [shaking hands with Mrs. Higgins] Ahdedo? MRS. HIGGINS. Very good of you to come. [Introducing] Colonel Pickering. FREDDY [bowing] Ahdedo? MRS. HIGGINS. I don't think you know my son, Professor Higgins. FREDDY [going to Higgins] Ahdedo? HIGGINS [looking at him much as if he were a pickpocket] I'll take my oath I've met you before somewhere. Where was it? FREDDY. I don't think so. HIGGINS [resignedly] It don't matter, anyhow. Sit down. He shakes Freddy's hand, and almost slings him on the ottoman with his face to the windows; then comes round to the other side of it. HIGGINS. Well, here we are, anyhow! [He sits down on the ottoman next Mrs. Eynsford Hill, on her left.] And now, what the devil are we going to talk about until Eliza comes? MRS. HIGGINS. Henry: you are the life and soul of the Royal Society's soirees; but really you're rather trying on more commonplace occasions. HIGGINS. Am I? Very sorry. [Beaming suddenly] I suppose I am, you know. [Uproariously] Ha, ha! MISS EYNSFORD HILL [who considers Higgins quite eligible matrimonially] I sympathize. I haven't any small talk. If people would only be frank and say what they really think! HIGGINS [relapsing into gloom] Lord forbid! MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [taking up her daughter's cue] But why? HIGGINS. What they think they ought to think is bad enough, Lord knows; but what they really think would break up the whole show. Do you suppose it would be really agreeable if I were to come out now with what I really think? MISS EYNSFORD HILL [gaily] Is it so very cynical? HIGGINS. Cynical! Who the dickens said it was cynical? I mean it wouldn't be decent. MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [seriously] Oh! I'm sure you don't mean that, Mr. Higgins. HIGGINS. You see, we're all savages, more or less. We're supposed to be civilized and cultured--to know all about poetry and philosophy and art and science, and so on; but how many of us know even the meanings of these names? [To Miss Hill] What do you know of poetry? [To Mrs. Hill] What do you know of science? [Indicating Freddy] What does he know of art or science or anything else? What the devil do you imagine I know of philosophy? MRS. HIGGINS [warningly] Or of manners, Henry? THE PARLOR-MAID [opening the door] Miss Doolittle. [She withdraws]. HIGGINS [rising hastily and running to Mrs. Higgins] Here she is, mother. [He stands on tiptoe and makes signs over his mother's head to Eliza to indicate to her which lady is her hostess]. Eliza, who is exquisitely dressed, produces an impression of such remarkable distinction and beauty as she enters that they all rise, quite flustered. Guided by Higgins's signals, she comes to Mrs. Higgins with studied grace. LIZA [speaking with pedantic correctness of pronunciation and great beauty of tone] How do you do, Mrs. Higgins? [She gasps slightly in making sure of the H in Higgins, but is quite successful]. Mr. Higgins told me I might come. MRS. HIGGINS [cordially] Quite right: I'm very glad indeed to see you. PICKERING. How do you do, Miss Doolittle? LIZA [shaking hands with him] Colonel Pickering, is it not? MRS. EYNSFORD HILL. I feel sure we have met before, Miss Doolittle. I remember your eyes. LIZA. How do you do? [She sits down on the ottoman gracefully in the place just left vacant by Higgins]. MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [introducing] My daughter Clara. LIZA. How do you do? CLARA [impulsively] How do you do? [She sits down on the ottoman beside Eliza, devouring her with her eyes]. FREDDY [coming to their side of the ottoman] I've certainly had the pleasure. MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [introducing] My son Freddy. LIZA. How do you do? Freddy bows and sits down in the Elizabethan chair, infatuated. HIGGINS [suddenly] By George, yes: it all comes back to me! [They stare at him]. Covent Garden! [Lamentably] What a damned thing! MRS. HIGGINS. Henry, please! [He is about to sit on the edge of the table]. Don't sit on my writing-table: you'll break it. HIGGINS [sulkily] Sorry. He goes to the divan, stumbling into the fender and over the fire-irons on his way; extricating himself with muttered imprecations; and finishing his disastrous journey by throwing himself so impatiently on the divan that he almost breaks it. Mrs. Higgins looks at him, but controls herself and says nothing. A long and painful pause ensues. MRS. HIGGINS [at last, conversationally] Will it rain, do you think? LIZA. The shallow depression in the west of these islands is likely to move slowly in an easterly direction. There are no indications of any great change in the barometrical situation. FREDDY. Ha! ha! how awfully funny! LIZA. What is wrong with that, young man? I bet I got it right. FREDDY. Killing! MRS. EYNSFORD HILL. I'm sure I hope it won't turn cold. There's so much influenza about. It runs right through our whole family regularly every spring. LIZA [darkly] My aunt died of influenza: so they said. MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [clicks her tongue sympathetically]!!! LIZA [in the same tragic tone] But it's my belief they done the old woman in. MRS. HIGGINS [puzzled] Done her in? LIZA. Y-e-e-e-es, Lord love you! Why should she die of influenza? She come through diphtheria right enough the year before. I saw her with my own eyes. Fairly blue with it, she was. They all thought she was dead; but my father he kept ladling gin down her throat til she came to so sudden that she bit the bowl off the spoon. MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [startled] Dear me! LIZA [piling up the indictment] What call would a woman with that strength in her have to die of influenza? What become of her new straw hat that should have come to me? Somebody pinched it; and what I say is, them as pinched it done her in. MRS. EYNSFORD HILL. What does doing her in mean? HIGGINS [hastily] Oh, that's the new small talk. To do a person in means to kill them. MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [to Eliza, horrified] You surely don't believe that your aunt was killed? LIZA. Do I not! Them she lived with would have killed her for a hat-pin, let alone a hat. MRS. EYNSFORD HILL. But it can't have been right for your father to pour spirits down her throat like that. It might have killed her. LIZA. Not her. Gin was mother's milk to her. Besides, he'd poured so much down his own throat that he knew the good of it. MRS. EYNSFORD HILL. Do you mean that he drank? LIZA. Drank! My word! Something chronic. MRS. EYNSFORD HILL. How dreadful for you! LIZA. Not a bit. It never did him no harm what I could see. But then he did not keep it up regular. [Cheerfully] On the burst, as you might say, from time to time. And always more agreeable when he had a drop in. When he was out of work, my mother used to give him fourpence and tell him to go out and not come back until he'd drunk himself cheerful and loving-like. There's lots of women has to make their husbands drunk to make them fit to live with. [Now quite at her ease] You see, it's like this. If a man has a bit of a conscience, it always takes him when he's sober; and then it makes him low-spirited. A drop of booze just takes that off and makes him happy. [To Freddy, who is in convulsions of suppressed laughter] Here! what are you sniggering at? FREDDY. The new small talk. You do it so awfully well. LIZA. If I was doing it proper, what was you laughing at? [To Higgins] Have I said anything I oughtn't? MRS. HIGGINS [interposing] Not at all, Miss Doolittle. LIZA. Well, that's a mercy, anyhow. [Expansively] What I always say is-- HIGGINS [rising and looking at his watch] Ahem! LIZA [looking round at him; taking the hint; and rising] Well: I must go. [They all rise. Freddy goes to the door]. So pleased to have met you. Good-bye. [She shakes hands with Mrs. Higgins]. MRS. HIGGINS. Good-bye. LIZA. Good-bye, Colonel Pickering. PICKERING. Good-bye, Miss Doolittle. [They shake hands]. LIZA [nodding to the others] Good-bye, all. FREDDY [opening the door for her] Are you walking across the Park, Miss Doolittle? If so-- LIZA. Walk! Not bloody likely. [Sensation]. I am going in a taxi. [She goes out]. Pickering gasps and sits down. Freddy goes out on the balcony to catch another glimpse of Eliza. MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [suffering from shock] Well, I really can't get used to the new ways. CLARA [throwing herself discontentedly into the Elizabethan chair]. Oh, it's all right, mamma, quite right. People will think we never go anywhere or see anybody if you are so old-fashioned. MRS. EYNSFORD HILL. I daresay I am very old-fashioned; but I do hope you won't begin using that expression, Clara. I have got accustomed to hear you talking about men as rotters, and calling everything filthy and beastly; though I do think it horrible and unladylike. But this last is really too much. Don't you think so, Colonel Pickering? PICKERING. Don't ask me. I've been away in India for several years; and manners have changed so much that I sometimes don't know whether I'm at a respectable dinner-table or in a ship's forecastle. CLARA. It's all a matter of habit. There's no right or wrong in it. Nobody means anything by it. And it's so quaint, and gives such a smart emphasis to things that are not in themselves very witty. I find the new small talk delightful and quite innocent. MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [rising] Well, after that, I think it's time for us to go. Pickering and Higgins rise. CLARA [rising] Oh yes: we have three at homes to go to still. Good-bye, Mrs. Higgins. Good-bye, Colonel Pickering. Good-bye, Professor Higgins. HIGGINS [coming grimly at her from the divan, and accompanying her to the door] Good-bye. Be sure you try on that small talk at the three at-homes. Don't be nervous about it. Pitch it in strong. CLARA [all smiles] I will. Good-bye. Such nonsense, all this early Victorian prudery! HIGGINS [tempting her] Such damned nonsense! CLARA. Such bloody nonsense! MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [convulsively] Clara! CLARA. Ha! ha! [She goes out radiant, conscious of being thoroughly up to date, and is heard descending the stairs in a stream of silvery laughter]. FREDDY [to the heavens at large] Well, I ask you [He gives it up, and comes to Mrs. Higgins]. Good-bye. MRS. HIGGINS [shaking hands] Good-bye. Would you like to meet Miss Doolittle again? FREDDY [eagerly] Yes, I should, most awfully. MRS. HIGGINS. Well, you know my days. FREDDY. Yes. Thanks awfully. Good-bye. [He goes out]. MRS. EYNSFORD HILL. Good-bye, Mr. Higgins. HIGGINS. Good-bye. Good-bye. MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [to Pickering] It's no use. I shall never be able to bring myself to use that word. PICKERING. Don't. It's not compulsory, you know. You'll get on quite well without it. MRS. EYNSFORD HILL. Only, Clara is so down on me if I am not positively reeking with the latest slang. Good-bye. PICKERING. Good-bye [They shake hands]. MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [to Mrs. Higgins] You mustn't mind Clara. [Pickering, catching from her lowered tone that this is not meant for him to hear, discreetly joins Higgins at the window]. We're so poor! and she gets so few parties, poor child! She doesn't quite know. [Mrs. Higgins, seeing that her eyes are moist, takes her hand sympathetically and goes with her to the door]. But the boy is nice. Don't you think so? MRS. HIGGINS. Oh, quite nice. I shall always be delighted to see him. MRS. EYNSFORD HILL. Thank you, dear. Good-bye. [She goes out]. HIGGINS [eagerly] Well? Is Eliza presentable [he swoops on his mother and drags her to the ottoman, where she sits down in Eliza's place with her son on her left]? Pickering returns to his chair on her right. MRS. HIGGINS. You silly boy, of course she's not presentable. She's a triumph of your art and of her dressmaker's; but if you suppose for a moment that she doesn't give herself away in every sentence she utters, you must be perfectly cracked about her. PICKERING. But don't you think something might be done? I mean something to eliminate the sanguinary element from her conversation. MRS. HIGGINS. Not as long as she is in Henry's hands. HIGGINS [aggrieved] Do you mean that my language is improper? MRS. HIGGINS. No, dearest: it would be quite proper--say on a canal barge; but it would not be proper for her at a garden party. HIGGINS [deeply injured] Well I must say-- PICKERING [interrupting him] Come, Higgins: you must learn to know yourself. I haven't heard such language as yours since we used to review the volunteers in Hyde Park twenty years ago. HIGGINS [sulkily] Oh, well, if you say so, I suppose I don't always talk like a bishop. MRS. HIGGINS [quieting Henry with a touch] Colonel Pickering: will you tell me what is the exact state of things in Wimpole Street? PICKERING [cheerfully: as if this completely changed the subject] Well, I have come to live there with Henry. We work together at my Indian Dialects; and we think it more convenient-- MRS. HIGGINS. Quite so. I know all about that: it's an excellent arrangement. But where does this girl live? HIGGINS. With us, of course. Where would she live? MRS. HIGGINS. But on what terms? Is she a servant? If not, what is she? PICKERING [slowly] I think I know what you mean, Mrs. Higgins. HIGGINS. Well, dash me if I do! I've had to work at the girl every day for months to get her to her present pitch. Besides, she's useful. She knows where my things are, and remembers my appointments and so forth. MRS. HIGGINS. How does your housekeeper get on with her? HIGGINS. Mrs. Pearce? Oh, she's jolly glad to get so much taken off her hands; for before Eliza came, she had to have to find things and remind me of my appointments. But she's got some silly bee in her bonnet about Eliza. She keeps saying "You don't think, sir": doesn't she, Pick? PICKERING. Yes: that's the formula. "You don't think, sir." That's the end of every conversation about Eliza. HIGGINS. As if I ever stop thinking about the girl and her confounded vowels and consonants. I'm worn out, thinking about her, and watching her lips and her teeth and her tongue, not to mention her soul, which is the quaintest of the lot. MRS. HIGGINS. You certainly are a pretty pair of babies, playing with your live doll. HIGGINS. Playing! The hardest job I ever tackled: make no mistake about that, mother. But you have no idea how frightfully interesting it is to take a human being and change her into a quite different human being by creating a new speech for her. It's filling up the deepest gulf that separates class from class and soul from soul.