Summary
The action begins at 11:15 p.m. in a heavy summer rainstorm. An after-theatre crowd takes shelter in the portico of St. Paul's Church in Covent Garden. A young girl, Clara Eynsford Hill, and her mother are waiting for Clara's brother Freddy, who looks in vain for an available cab. Colliding into flower peddler Liza Doolittle, Freddy scatters her flowers. After he departs to continue looking for a cab, Liza convinces Mrs. Eynsford Hill to pay for the damaged flowers; she then cons three halfpence from Colonel Pickering. Liza is made aware of the presence of Henry Higgins, who has been writing down every word she has said. Thinking Higgins is a policeman who is going to arrest her for scamming people, Liza becomes hysterical. Higgins turns out, however, to be making a record of her speech for scientific ends. Higgins is an expert in phonetics who claims: "I can place any man within six miles. I can place him within two miles in London. Sometimes within two streets." Upbraiding Liza for her speech, Higgins boasts that "in three months I could pass that girl off as a duchess at an ambassador's garden party." Higgins and Pickering eventually trade names and realize they have long wanted to meet each other. They go off to dine together and discuss phonetics. Liza picks up the money Higgins had flung down upon exiting and for once treats herself to a taxi ride home.
An excerpt from Act I
THE NOTE TAKER.
Simply phonetics. The science of speech. That's my profession; also my
hobby. Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby! You can spot
an Irishman or a Yorkshireman by his brogue. I can place any man within six
miles. I can place him within two miles in London. Sometimes within two
streets.
THE FLOWER GIRL.
Ought to be ashamed of himself, unmanly coward!
THE GENTLEMAN.
But is there a living in that?
THE NOTE TAKER.
Oh yes. Quite a fat one. This is an age of upstarts. Men begin in Kentish Town with 80 pounds a year, and end in Park Lane with a hundred thousand. They want to drop Kentish Town; but they give themselves away every time they open their mouths. Now I can teach them--
THE FLOWER GIRL.
Let him mind his own business and leave a poor girl--
THE NOTE TAKER
[explosively] Woman: cease this detestable boohooing instantly; or else seek
the shelter of some other place of worship.
THE FLOWER GIRL
[with feeble defiance] I've a right to be here if I like, same as you.
THE NOTE TAKER.
A woman who utters such depressing and disgusting sounds has no right to
be anywhere--no right to live. Remember that you are a human being with a
soul and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language is the
language of Shakespeare and Milton and The Bible; and don't sit there
crooning like a bilious pigeon.
THE FLOWER GIRL
[quite overwhelmed, and looking up at him in mingled wonder and
deprecation without daring to raise her head] Ah--ah--ah--ow--ow--oo!
THE NOTE TAKER
[whipping out his book] Heavens! what a sound! [He writes; then holds out
the book and reads, reproducing her vowels exactly] Ah--ah--ah--ow--ow--
ow--oo!
THE FLOWER GIRL
[tickled by the performance, and laughing in spite of herself] Garn!
THE NOTE TAKER.
You see this creature with her kerbstone English: the English that will keep
her in the gutter to the end of her days. Well, sir, in three months I could pass that girl off as a duchess at an ambassador's garden party. I could even get her a place as lady's maid or shop assistant, which requires better English. That's the sort of thing I do for commercial millionaires. And on the profits of it I do genuine scientific work in phonetics, and a little as a poet on Miltonic lines.
Act 4: Confrontation
Summary
Midnight, in Henry's laboratory. Higgins, Pickering, and Liza return from the party. Higgins loudly bemoans the evening: "What a crew! What a silly tomfoolery!" Liza grows more and more frustrated as he continues to complain ("Thank God it's over!"), not paying attention to her or acknowledging her role in his triumph. Complaining about not being able to find his slippers, Higgins does not observe Liza retrieving them and placing them directly by him. She controls her anger as Higgins and Pickering exit, but when Higgins storms back in, still wrathfully looking for his slippers, Liza hurls them at him with all her might. She derides Higgins for his selfishness and demands of him, "What's to become of me?" Higgins tries to convince her that her irritation is "only imagination," that she should "go to bed like a good girl and sleep it off." Higgins gradually understands Liza's economic concern (that she cannot go back to selling flowers, but has no other future), but he can only awkwardly suggest marriage to a rich man as a solution. Liza criticizes the subjugation that Higgins's suggestion implies: "I sold flowers. I didn't sell myself. Now you've made a lady of me I'm not fit to sell anything else." Liza infuriates Higgins by rejecting him, giving him back the rented jewels she wears, and a ring he had bought for her. He angrily throws the ring in the fireplace and storms out.
In the next important "optional scene," Liza has left Higgins's home and comes upon Freddy, who, infatuated with the former flower girl, has recently been spending most of his nights gazing up at Liza's window. They fall into each other's arms, but their passionate kisses are interrupted first by one constable, then another, and another. Liza suggests they jump in a taxi, "and drive about all night; and in the morning I'll call on old Mrs. Higgins and ask her what I ought to do."
An Excerpt from Act IV
File 3 06:45-15:30
LIZA
[pulling herself together in desperation] What am I fit for? What have you left me fit for? Where am I to go? What am I to do? What's to become of me?
HIGGINS
[enlightened, but not at all impressed] Oh, that's what's worrying you, is it?
[He thrusts his hands into his pockets, and walks about in his usual manner, rattling the contents of his pockets, as if condescending to a trivial subject out of pure kindness]. I shouldn't bother about it if I were you. I should imagine you won't have much difficulty in settling yourself, somewhere or other, though I hadn't quite realized that you were going away. [She looks quickly at him: he does not look at her, but examines the dessert stand on the piano and decides that he will eat an apple]. You might marry, you know. [He bites a large piece out of the apple, and munches it noisily]. You see, Eliza, all men are not confirmed old bachelors like me and the Colonel. Most men are the marrying sort (poor devils!); and you're not bad-looking; it's quite a pleasure to look at you sometimes--not now, of course, because you're crying and looking as ugly as the very devil; but when you're all right and quite yourself, you're what I should call attractive. That is, to the people in the marrying line, you understand. You go to bed and have a good nice rest; and then get up and look at yourself in the glass; and you won't feel so cheap.
[ELIZA again looks at him, speechless, and does not stir.]
[The look is quite lost on him: he eats his apple with a dreamy expression of happiness, as it is quite a good one.]
HIGGINS
[a genial afterthought occurring to him] I daresay my mother could find
some chap or other who would do very well--
LIZA.
We were above that at the corner of Tottenham Court Road.
HIGGINS
[waking up] What do you mean?
LIZA.
I sold flowers. I didn't sell myself. Now you've made a lady of me I'm not fit
to sell anything else. I wish you'd left me where you found me.
HIGGINS
[slinging the core of the apple decisively into the grate] Tosh, Eliza. Don't
you insult human relations by dragging all this cant about buying and selling
into it. You needn't marry the fellow if you don't like him.
LIZA.
What else am I to do?
HIGGINS.
Oh, lots of things. What about your old idea of a florist's shop? Pickering
could set you up in one: he's lots of money. [Chuckling] He'll have to pay for
all those togs you have been wearing today; and that, with the hire of the
jewellery, will make a big hole in two hundred pounds. Why, six months ago
you would have thought it the millennium to have a flower shop of your
own. Come! you'll be all right. I must clear off to bed: I'm devilish sleepy. By
the way, I came down for something: I forget what it was.
LIZA.
Your slippers.
HIGGINS.
Oh yes, of course. You shied them at me. [He picks them up, and is going out
when she rises and speaks to him].
LIZA.
Before you go, sir--
HIGGINS
[dropping the slippers in his surprise at her calling him sir] Eh?
LIZA.
Do my clothes belong to me or to Colonel Pickering?
HIGGINS
[coming back into the room as if her question were the very climax of
unreason] What the devil use would they be to Pickering?
LIZA.
He might want them for the next girl you pick up to experiment on.
HIGGINS
[shocked and hurt] Is that the way you feel towards us?
LIZA.
I don't want to hear anything more about that. All I want to know is whether
anything belongs to me. My own clothes were burnt.
HIGGINS.
But what does it matter? Why need you start bothering about that in the
middle of the night?
LIZA.
I want to know what I may take away with me. I don't want to be accused of
stealing.
HIGGINS
[now deeply wounded] Stealing! You shouldn't have said that, Eliza. That
shows a want of feeling.
LIZA.
I'm sorry. I'm only a common ignorant girl; and in my station I have to be
careful. There can't be any feelings between the like of you and the like of me. Please will you tell me what belongs to me and what doesn't?
HIGGINS
[very sulky] You may take the whole damned houseful if you like. Except the jewels. They're hired. Will that satisfy you? [He turns on his heel and is about to go in extreme dudgeon].
LIZA
[drinking in his emotion like nectar, and nagging him to provoke a further
supply] Stop, please. [She takes off her jewels]. Will you take these to your
room and keep them safe? I don't want to run the risk of their being missing.
HIGGINS
[furious] Hand them over. [She puts them into his hands]. If these belonged
to me instead of to the jeweler, I'd ram them down your ungrateful throat.
[He perfunctorily thrusts them into his pockets, unconsciously decorating
himself with the protruding ends of the chains].
LIZA
[taking a ring off] This ring isn't the jeweler's: it's the one you bought me in
Brighton. I don't want it now. [Higgins dashes the ring violently into the
fireplace, and turns on her so threateningly that she crouches over the piano with her hands over her face, and exclaims] Don't you hit me.
HIGGINS.
Hit you! You infamous creature, how dare you accuse me of such a thing? It is you who have hit me. You have wounded me to the heart.
LIZA
[thrilling with hidden joy] I'm glad. I've got a little of my own back, anyhow.
HIGGINS
[with dignity, in his finest professional style] You have caused me to lose my temper: a thing that has hardly ever happened to me before. I prefer to say nothing more tonight. I am going to bed.
LIZA
[pertly] You'd better leave a note for Mrs. Pearce about the coffee; for she
won't be told by me.
HIGGINS
[formally] Damn Mrs. Pearce; and damn the coffee; and damn you; and damn my own folly in having lavished my hard-earned knowledge and the treasure of my regard and intimacy on a heartless guttersnipe. [He goes out with impressive decorum, and spoils it by slamming the door savagely].
[ELIZA smiles for the first time; expresses her feelings by a wild
pantomime in which an imitation of Higgins's exit is confused with her own
triumph; and finally goes down on her knees on the hearthrug to look for the ring.]
Act V: Final Confrontation and Denouement
Summary
Mrs. Higgins's drawing room, the next day. Henry and Pickering arrive, and while they are downstairs phoning the police about Liza's disappearance, Mrs. Higgins asks the chambermaid to warn Liza, taking shelter upstairs, not to come down. Mrs. Higgins scolds Henry and Pickering for their childishness and the careless manner in which they treated another human. The arrival of Alfred Doolittle is announced; he enters dressed fashionably as a bridegroom, but in an agitated state, casting accusations at Higgins. Doolittle explains at length how by a deed of Henry's he has come into a regular pension. His lady companion will now marry him, but still he is miserable. Where he once could "put the touch" on anyone for drinking money, now everyone comes to him, demanding favors and monetary support. At this point, Mrs. Higgins reveals that Liza is upstairs, again criticizing Henry for his unthoughtful behavior towards the girl. Mrs. Higgins calls Liza down, asking Doolittle to step out for a moment to delay the shock of the news he brings. Liza enters, politely cool towards Henry. She thanks Pickering for all the respect he has shown her since their first meeting: calling her Miss Doolittle, removing his hat, opening doors. "The difference,'' Liza concludes, "between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves but how she's treated." At this point, Doolittle returns. He and Liza are reunited, and all the characters (excepting Henry) prepare to leave to see Doolittle married. Liza and Higgins are left alone. Higgins argues that he didn't treat Liza poorly because she was a flower girl but because he treats everyone the same. He defends his behavior by attacking traditional social graces as absurd: "You call me a brute because you couldn't buy a claim on me by fetching my slippers," he says. Liza declares that since Higgins gave no thought to her future, she will marry Freddy and support herself by teaching phonetics, perhaps assisting Nepommuck. Higgins grows furious at Liza and
"lays his hands on her." He quickly regrets doing so and expresses appreciation of Liza's newfound independence. At the play's curtain he remains incorrigible, however, cheerfully assuming that Liza will continue to manage his household details as she had done during her days of instruction with him.
An Excerpt from Act V
File 3 0:42:47-0:50:46
HIGGINS.
Well, Eliza, you've had a bit of your own back, as you call it. Have you had
enough? and are you going to be reasonable? Or do you want any more?
LIZA.
You want me back only to pick up your slippers and put up with your
tempers and fetch and carry for you.
HIGGINS.
I haven't said I wanted you back at all.
LIZA.
Oh, indeed. Then what are we talking about?
HIGGINS.
About you, not about me. If you come back I shall treat you just as I have
always treated you. I can't change my nature; and I don't intend to change
my manners. My manners are exactly the same as Colonel Pickering's.
LIZA.
That's not true. He treats a flower girl as if she was a duchess.
HIGGINS.
And I treat a duchess as if she was a flower girl.
LIZA.
I see. [She turns away composedly, and sits on the ottoman, facing the
window]. The same to everybody.
HIGGINS.
Just so.
LIZA.
Like father.
HIGGINS
[grinning, a little taken down] Without accepting the comparison at all
points, Eliza, it's quite true that your father is not a snob, and that he will be
quite at home in any station of life to which his eccentric destiny may call
him. [Seriously] The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good
manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same
manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven,
where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another.
LIZA.
Amen. You are a born preacher.
HIGGINS
[irritated] The question is not whether I treat you rudely, but whether you
ever heard me treat anyone else better.
LIZA
[with sudden sincerity] I don't care how you treat me. I don't mind your
swearing at me. I don't mind a black eye: I've had one before this. But
[standing up and facing him] I won't be passed over.
HIGGINS.
Then get out of my way; for I won't stop for you. You talk about me as if I
were a motor bus.
LIZA.
So you are a motor bus: all bounce and go, and no consideration for anyone.
But I can do without you: don't think I can't.
HIGGINS.
I know you can. I told you you could.
LIZA
[wounded, getting away from him to the other side of the ottoman with her
face to the hearth] I know you did, you brute. You wanted to get rid of me.
HIGGINS.
Liar.
LIZA.
Thank you. [She sits down with dignity].%
HIGGINS.
You never asked yourself, I suppose, whether I could do without you.
LIZA
[earnestly] Don't you try to get round me. You'll have to do without me.
HIGGINS
[arrogant] I can do without anybody. I have my own soul: my own spark of
divine fire. But [with sudden humility] I shall miss you, Eliza. [He sits down
near her on the ottoman]. I have learnt something from your idiotic notions: I confess that humbly and gratefully. And I have grown accustomed to your
voice and appearance. I like them, rather.
LIZA.
Well, you have both of them on your gramophone and in your book of
photographs. When you feel lonely without me, you can turn the machine on. It's got no feelings to hurt.
HIGGINS.
I can't turn your soul on. Leave me those feelings; and you can take away the voice and the face. They are not you.
LIZA.
Oh, you are a devil. You can twist the heart in a girl as easy as some could
twist her arms to hurt her. Mrs. Pearce warned me. Time and again she has
wanted to leave you; and you always got round her at the last minute. And
you don't care a bit for her. And you don't care a bit for me.
HIGGINS.
I care for life, for humanity; and you are a part of it that has come my way
and been built into my house. What more can you or anyone ask?
LIZA.
I won't care for anybody that doesn't care for me.
HIGGINS.
Commercial principles, Eliza. Like [reproducing her Covent Garden
pronunciation with professional exactness] s'yollin voylets [selling violets],
isn't it?
LIZA.
Don't sneer at me. It's mean to sneer at me.
HIGGINS.
I have never sneered in my life. Sneering doesn't become either the human
face or the human soul. I am expressing my righteous contempt for
Commercialism. I don't and won't trade in affection. You call me a brute
because you couldn't buy a claim on me by fetching my slippers and finding
my spectacles. You were a fool: I think a woman fetching a man's slippers is a disgusting sight: did I ever fetch your slippers? I think a good deal more of you for throwing them in my face. No use slaving for me and then saying
you want to be cared for: who cares for a slave? If you come back, come back for the sake of good fellowship; for you'll get nothing else. You've had a thousand times as much out of me as I have out of you; and if you dare to set up your little dog's tricks of fetching and carrying slippers against my
creation of a Duchess Eliza, I'll slam the door in your silly face.
LIZA.
What did you do it for if you didn't care for me?
HIGGINS
[heartily] Why, because it was my job.
LIZA.
You never thought of the trouble it would make for me.
HIGGINS.
Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been afraid of making trouble? Making life means making trouble. There's only one way of
escaping trouble; and that's killing things. Cowards, you notice, are always
shrieking to have troublesome people killed.
LIZA.
I'm no preacher: I don't notice things like that. I notice that you don't notice
me.
HIGGINS
[jumping up and walking about intolerantly] Eliza: you're an idiot. I waste
the treasures of my Miltonic mind by spreading them before you. Once for
all, understand that I go my way and do my work without caring twopence
what happens to either of us. I am not intimidated, like your father and your
stepmother. So you can come back or go to the devil: which you please.
LIZA.
What am I to come back for?
HIGGINS
[bouncing up on his knees on the ottoman and leaning over it to her] For the fun of it. That's why I took you on.
LIZA
[with averted face] And you may throw me out tomorrow if I don't do
everything you want me to?
HIGGINS.
Yes; and you may walk out tomorrow if I don't do everything you want me
to.
LIZA.
And live with my stepmother?
HIGGINS.
Yes, or sell flowers.
LIZA.
Oh! if I only could go back to my flower basket! I should be independent of
both you and father and all the world! Why did you take my independence
from me? Why did I give it up? I'm a slave now, for all my fine clothes.
HIGGINS.
Not a bit. I'll adopt you as my daughter and settle money on you if you like.
Or would you rather marry Pickering?
LIZA
[looking fiercely round at him] I wouldn't marry you if you asked me; and
you're nearer my age than what he is.
HIGGINS
[gently] Than he is: not "than what he is."
LIZA
[losing her temper and rising] I'll talk as I like. You're not my teacher now.
HIGGINS
[reflectively] I don't suppose Pickering would, though. He's as confirmed an
old bachelor as I am.
LIZA.
That's not what I want; and don't you think it. I've always had chaps enough
wanting me that way. Freddy Hill writes to me twice and three times a day,
sheets and sheets.
HIGGINS
[disagreeably surprised] Damn his impudence! [He recoils and finds himself
sitting on his heels].
LIZA.
He has a right to if he likes, poor lad. And he does love me.
HIGGINS
[getting of the ottoman] You have no right to encourage him.
LIZA.
Every girl has a right to be loved.
HIGGINS.
What! By fools like that?
LIZA.
Freddy's not a fool. And if he's weak and poor and wants me, may be he'd
make me happier than my betters that bully me and don't want me.
HIGGINS.
Can he make anything of you? That's the point.
LIZA.
Perhaps I could make something of him. But I never thought of us making
anything of one another; and you never think of anything else. I only want to be natural.
HIGGINS.
In short, you want me to be as infatuated about you as Freddy? Is that it?
LIZA.
No I don't. That's not the sort of feeling I want from you. And don't you be
too sure of yourself or of me. I could have been a bad girl if I'd liked. I've seen more of some things than you, for all your learning. Girls like me can drag gentlemen down to make love to them easy enough. And they wish each other dead the next minute.
HIGGINS.
Of course they do. Then what in thunder are we quarrelling about?
LIZA
[much troubled] I want a little kindness. I know I'm a common ignorant girl,
and you a book-learned gentleman; but I'm not dirt under your feet. What I
done [correcting herself] what I did was not for the dresses and the taxis: I
did it because we were pleasant together and I come--came--to care for you; not to want you to make love to me, and not forgetting the difference
between us, but more friendly like.
HIGGINS.
Well, of course. That's just how I feel. And how Pickering feels. Eliza: you're a fool.
LIZA.
That's not a proper answer to give me [she sinks on the chair at the writingtable in tears].
HIGGINS.
It's all you'll get until you stop being a common idiot. If you're going to be a
lady, you'll have to give up feeling neglected if the men you know don't
spend half their time snivelling over you and the other half giving you black
eyes. If you can't stand the coldness of my sort of life, and the strain of it, go back to the gutter. Work til you are more a brute than a human being; and then cuddle and squabble and drink til you fall asleep. Oh, it's a fine life, the life of the gutter. It's real: it's warm: it's violent: you can feel it through the thickest skin: you can taste it and smell it without any training or any work. Not like Science and Literature and Classical Music and Philosophy and Art. You find me cold, unfeeling, selfish, don't you? Very well: be off with you to the sort of people you like. Marry some sentimental hog or other with lots of money, and a thick pair of lips to kiss you with and a thick pair of boots to kick you with. If you can't appreciate what you've got, you'd better get what you can appreciate.
LIZA
[desperate] Oh, you are a cruel tyrant. I can't talk to you: you turn everything against me: I'm always in the wrong. But you know very well all the time that you're nothing but a bully. You know I can't go back to the gutter, as you call it, and that I have no real friends in the world but you and the Colonel. You know well I couldn't bear to live with a low common man after you two; and it's wicked and cruel of you to insult me by pretending I could. You think I must go back to Wimpole Street because I have nowhere else to go but father's. But don't you be too sure that you have me under your feet to be trampled on and talked down. I'll marry Freddy, I will, as soon as he's able to support me.
HIGGINS
[sitting down beside her] Rubbish! you shall marry an ambassador. You shall marry the Governor-General of India or the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, or somebody who wants a deputy-queen. I'm not going to have my masterpiece thrown away on Freddy.
LIZA.
You think I like you to say that. But I haven't forgot what you said a minute
ago; and I won't be coaxed round as if I was a baby or a puppy. If I can't have kindness, I'll have independence.
HIGGINS.
Independence? That's middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.
LIZA
[rising determinedly] I'll let you see whether I'm dependent on you. If you
can preach, I can teach. I'll go and be a teacher.
HIGGINS.
What'll you teach, in heaven's name?
LIZA.
What you taught me. I'll teach phonetics.
HIGGINS.
Ha! Ha! Ha!
LIZA.
I'll offer myself as an assistant to Professor Nepean.
HIGGINS
[rising in a fury] What! That impostor! that humbug! that toadying
ignoramus! Teach him my methods! my discoveries! You take one step in his
direction and I'll wring your neck. [He lays hands on her]. Do you hear?
LIZA
[defiantly non-resistant] Wring away. What do I care? I knew you'd strike me some day. [He lets her go, stamping with rage at having forgotten himself, and recoils so hastily that he stumbles back into his seat on the ottoman]. Aha! Now I know how to deal with you. What a fool I was not to think of it before! You can't take away the knowledge you gave me. You said I had a finer ear than you. And I can be civil and kind to people, which is more than you can. Aha! That's done you, Henry Higgins, it has. Now I don't care that [snapping her fingers] for your bullying and your big talk. I'll advertize it in the papers that your duchess is only a flower girl that you taught, and that she'll teach anybody to be a duchess just the same in six months for a thousand guineas. Oh, when I think of myself crawling under your feet and being trampled on and called names, when all the time I had only to lift up my finger to be as good as you, I could just kick myself.%
HIGGINS
[wondering at her] You damned impudent slut, you! But it's better than
snivelling; better than fetching slippers and finding spectacles, isn't it?
[Rising] By George, Eliza, I said I'd make a woman of you; and I have. I like
you like this.
LIZA.
Yes: you turn round and make up to me now that I'm not afraid of you, and
can do without you.
HIGGINS.
Of course I do, you little fool. Five minutes ago you were like a millstone
round my neck. Now you're a tower of strength: a consort battleship. You
and I and Pickering will be three old bachelors together instead of only two
men and a silly girl.
[Mrs. Higgins returns, dressed for the wedding. Eliza instantly becomes cool and elegant.
MRS. HIGGINS.
The carriage is waiting, Eliza. Are you ready?
LIZA.
Quite. Is the Professor coming?
MRS. HIGGINS.
Certainly not. He can't behave himself in church. He makes remarks out loud all the time on the clergyman's pronunciation.
LIZA.
Then I shall not see you again, Professor. Good bye. [She goes to the door].
MRS. HIGGINS
[coming to Higgins] Good-bye, dear.
HIGGINS.
Good-bye, mother. [He is about to kiss her, when he recollects something].
Oh, by the way, Eliza, order a ham and a Stilton cheese, will you? And buy
me a pair of reindeer gloves, number eights, and a tie to match that new suit of mine, at Eale & Binman's. You can choose the color. [His cheerful, careless, vigorous voice shows that he is incorrigible].
LIZA
[disdainfully] Buy them yourself. [She sweeps out].
MRS. HIGGINS.
I'm afraid you've spoiled that girl, Henry. But never mind, dear: I'll buy you
the tie and gloves.
HIGGINS
[sunnily] Oh, don't bother. She'll buy em all right enough. Good-bye.
[They kiss. MRS. HIGGINS runs out. HIGGINS, left alone, rattles his cash in his pocket; chuckles; and disports himself in a highly self-satisfied manner.]
