Pygmalion - George Bernard Shaw (best e books to read txt) 📗

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 bathroom 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 bulldog 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 wallpapers, and the Morris chintz window curtains and brocade covers of