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.