George Bernard Shaw a penn State Electronic Classics Series Publication

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 present-
able. 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

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53
Shaw
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 sub-
ject] Well, I have come to live there with Henry. We work
together at my Indian Dialects; and we think it more conve-
nient—
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?

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54
Pygmalion
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 say-
ing “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.
PICKERING 
[drawing his chair closer to Mrs. Higgins and