Act II - Page 2

over any of it again?

PICKERING
[rising and coming to the fireplace, where he 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 myself because I can pronounce twenty-four distinct vowel sounds; but your hundred and thirty beat me. I cant 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 theyre all as different as A from B. [Mrs. Pearce looks in: she is Higgins's housekeeper] Whats the matter?

MRSX PEARCE
[hesitating, evidently perplexed] A young woman wants to see you, sir.

HIGGINS
A young woman! What does she want?

MRSX PEARCE
Well, sir, she says youll be glad to see her when you know what shes come about. Shes quite a common 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 Ive not done wrong; but really you see such queer people sometimes--youll excuse me, I'm sure, sir--

HIGGINS
Oh, thats all right, Mrs. Pearce. Has she an interesting accent?

MRSX PEARCE
Oh, something dreadful, sir, really. I dont know how you can take an interest in it.

HIGGINS
[to Pickering] Lets have her up. Shew her up, Mrs. Pearce [he rushes across to his working table and picks out a cylinder to use on the phonograph].

MRSX 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 shew 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.

MRSX 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 distinction he makes between men and women is that when he is neither bullying nor exclaiming to the heavens against some featherweight 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 disappointment, and at once, babylike, making an intolerable