George Bernard Shaw a penn State Electronic Classics Series Publication

plants himself with his back to the fire] No, thank you; not
now. I’m quite done up for this morning.
HIGGINS 
[following him, and standing beside him on his
left] Tired of listening to sounds?
PICKERING
. Yes. It’s a fearful strain. I rather fancied my-
self because I can pronounce twenty-four distinct vowel
sounds; but your hundred and thirty beat me. I can’t hear a
bit of difference between most of them.
HIGGINS 
[chuckling, and going over to the piano to eat sweets]
Oh, that comes with practice. You hear no difference at first;
but you keep on listening, and presently you find they’re all
as different as A from B. [Mrs. Pearce looks in: she is Higgins’s
housekeeper] What’s the matter?
MRS. PEARCE 
[hesitating, evidently perplexed] A young
woman wants to see you, sir.
HIGGINS
. A young woman! What does she want?
MRS. PEARCE
. Well, sir, she says you’ll be glad to see her
when you know what she’s come about. She’s quite a com-
mon girl, sir. Very common indeed. I should have sent her
away, only I thought perhaps you wanted her to talk into
your machines. I hope I’ve not done wrong; but really you
see such queer people sometimes—you’ll excuse me, I’m sure,
sir—

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20
Pygmalion
HIGGINS
. Oh, that’s all right, Mrs. Pearce. Has she an in-
teresting accent?
MRS. PEARCE
. Oh, something dreadful, sir, really. I don’t
know how you can take an interest in it.
HIGGINS 
[to Pickering] Let’s have her up. Show her up,
Mrs. Pearce [he rushes across to his working table and picks out
a cylinder to use on the phonograph].
MRS. PEARCE 
[only half resigned to it] Very well, sir. It’s for
you to say. [She goes downstairs].
HIGGINS
. This is rather a bit of luck. I’ll show you how I
make records. We’ll set her talking; and I’ll take it down first
in Bell’s visible Speech; then in broad Romic; and then we’ll
get her on the phonograph so that you can turn her on as
often as you like with the written transcript before you.
MRS. PEARCE 
[returning] This is the young woman, sir.
The flower girl enters in state. She has a hat with three ostrich
feathers, orange, sky-blue, and red. She has a nearly clean apron,
and the shoddy coat has been tidied a little. The pathos of this
deplorable figure, with its innocent vanity and consequential
air, touches Pickering, who has already straightened himself in
the presence of Mrs. Pearce. But as to Higgins, the only distinc-
tion he makes between men and women is that when he is nei-
ther bullying nor exclaiming to the heavens against some feath-
erweight cross, he coaxes women as a child coaxes its nurse when
it wants to get anything out of her.
HIGGINS 
[brusquely, recognizing her with unconcealed dis-
appointment, and at once, baby-like, making an intolerable
grievance of it] Why, this is the girl I jotted down last night.
She’s no use: I’ve got all the records I want of the Lisson
Grove lingo; and I’m not going to waste another cylinder on
it. [To the girl] Be off with you: I don’t want you.
THE FLOWER GIRL
. Don’t you be so saucy. You ain’t heard
what I come for yet. [To Mrs. Pearce, who is waiting at the
door for further instruction] Did you tell him I come in a taxi?
MRS. PEARCE
. Nonsense, girl! what do you think a gentle-
man like Mr. Higgins cares what you came in?
THE FLOWER GIRL
. Oh, we are proud! He ain’t above
giving lessons, not him: I heard him say so. Well, I ain’t come
here to ask for any compliment; and if my money’s not good
enough I can go elsewhere.
HIGGINS
. Good enough for what?
THE FLOWER GIRL
. Good enough for ye—oo. Now you

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21
Shaw
know, don’t you? I’m come to have lessons, I am. And to pay
for em too: make no mistake.
HIGGINS 
[stupent] WELL!!! [Recovering his breath with a
gasp] What do you expect me to say to you?
THE FLOWER GIRL
. Well, if you was a gentleman, you
might ask me to sit down, I think. Don’t I tell you I’m bring-
ing you business?
HIGGINS
. Pickering: shall we ask this baggage to sit down
or shall we throw her out of the window?
THE FLOWER GIRL 
[running away in terror to the piano,