George Bernard Shaw a penn State Electronic Classics Series Publication

throws the letter after the circulars].
Eliza returns with a pair of large down-at-heel slippers. She
places them on the carpet before Higgins, and sits as before with-
out a word.
HIGGINS 
[yawning again] Oh Lord! What an evening! What
a crew! What a silly tomfoollery! [He raises his shoe to unlace
it, and catches sight of the slippers. He stops unlacing and looks
at them as if they had appeared there of their own accord]. Oh!
they’re there, are they?
PICKERING 
[stretching himself] Well, I feel a bit tired. It’s
been a long day. The garden party, a dinner party, and the
opera! Rather too much of a good thing. But you’ve won your
bet, Higgins. Eliza did the trick, and something to spare, eh?
HIGGINS 
[fervently] Thank God it’s over!
Eliza flinches violently; but they take no notice of her; and she
recovers herself and sits stonily as before.
PICKERING
. Were you nervous at the garden party? I was.
Eliza didn’t seem a bit nervous.
HIGGINS
. Oh, she wasn’t nervous. I knew she’d be all right.
No, it’s the strain of putting the job through all these months
that has told on me. It was interesting enough at first, while
we were at the phonetics; but after that I got deadly sick of
it. If I hadn’t backed myself to do it I should have chucked
the whole thing up two months ago. It was a silly notion: the
whole thing has been a bore.
PICKERING
. Oh come! the garden party was frightfully
exciting. My heart began beating like anything.
HIGGINS
. Yes, for the first three minutes. But when I saw
we were going to win hands down, I felt like a bear in a cage,
hanging about doing nothing. The dinner was worse: sitting
gorging there for over an hour, with nobody but a damned
fool of a fashionable woman to talk to! I tell you, Pickering,
never again for me. No more artificial duchesses. The whole
thing has been simple purgatory.
PICKERING
. You’ve never been broken in properly to the
social routine. [Strolling over to the piano] I rather enjoy dip-
ping into it occasionally myself: it makes me feel young again.
Anyhow, it was a great success: an immense success. I was
quite frightened once or twice because Eliza was doing it so
well. You see, lots of the real people can’t do it at all: they’re
such fools that they think style comes by nature to people in
their position; and so they never learn. There’s always some-

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Shaw
thing professional about doing a thing superlatively well.
HIGGINS
. Yes: that’s what drives me mad: the silly people
don’t know their own silly business. [Rising] However, it’s
over and done with; and now I can go to bed at last without
dreading tomorrow.
Eliza’s beauty becomes murderous.
PICKERING
. I think I shall turn in too. Still, it’s been a
great occasion: a triumph for you. Good-night. [He goes].
HIGGINS 
[following him] Good-night. [Over his shoulder, at
the door] Put out the lights, Eliza; and tell Mrs. Pearce not to
make coffee for me in the morning: I’ll take tea. [He goes out].
Eliza tries to control herself and feel indifferent as she rises and
walks across to the hearth to switch off the lights. By the time she
gets there she is on the point of screaming. She sits down in
Higgins’s chair and holds on hard to the arms. Finally she gives
way and flings herself furiously on the floor raging.
HIGGINS 
[in despairing wrath outside] What the devil have
I done with my slippers? [He appears at the door].
LIZA 
[snatching up the slippers, and hurling them at him one