MRS. PEARCE. Only this morning, sir, you applied it to your boots, to
the butter, and to the brown bread.
HIGGINS. Oh, that! Mere alliteration, Mrs. Pearce, natural to a poet.
MRS. PEARCE. Well, sir, whatever you choose to call it, I beg you not
to let the girl hear you repeat it.
HIGGINS. Oh, very well, very well. Is that all?
MRS. PEARCE. No, sir. We shall have to be very particular with this
girl as to personal cleanliness.
HIGGINS. Certainly. Quite right. Most important.
MRS. PEARCE. I mean not to be slovenly about her dress or untidy in
leaving things about.
HIGGINS [going to her solemnly] Just so. I intended to call your
attention to that [He passes on to Pickering, who is enjoying the
conversation immensely]. It is these little things that matter,
Pickering. Take care of the pence and the pounds will take care of
themselves is as true of personal habits as of money. [He comes to
anchor on the hearthrug, with the air of a man in an unassailable
position].
MRS. PEARCE. Yes, sir. Then might I ask you not to come down to
breakfast in your dressing-gown, or at any rate not to use it as a
napkin to the extent you do, sir. And if you would be so good as not to
eat everything off the same plate, and to remember not to put the
porridge saucepan out of your hand on the clean tablecloth, it would be
a better example to the girl. You know you nearly choked yourself with
a fishbone in the jam only last week.
HIGGINS [routed from the hearthrug and drifting back to the piano] I
may do these things sometimes in absence of mind; but surely I don't do
them habitually. [Angrily] By the way: my dressing-gown smells most
damnably of benzine.
MRS. PEARCE. No doubt it does, Mr. Higgins. But if you will wipe your
fingers--
HIGGINS [yelling] Oh very well, very well: I'll wipe them in my hair in
future.
MRS. PEARCE. I hope you're not offended, Mr. Higgins.
HIGGINS [shocked at finding himself thought capable of an unamiable
sentiment] Not at all, not at all. You're quite right, Mrs. Pearce: I
shall be particularly careful before the girl. Is that all?
MRS. PEARCE. No, sir. Might she use some of those Japanese dresses you
brought from abroad? I really can't put her back into her old things.
HIGGINS. Certainly. Anything you like. Is that all?
MRS. PEARCE. Thank you, sir. That's all. [She goes out].
HIGGINS. You know, Pickering, that woman has the most extraordinary
ideas about me. Here I am, a shy, diffident sort of man. I've never
been able to feel really grown-up and tremendous, like other chaps. And
yet she's firmly persuaded that I'm an arbitrary overbearing bossing
kind of person. I can't account for it.