MRS. EYNSFORD HILL.
I’m sure I hope it won’t turn cold.
There’s so much Influenza about.
It runs right through
our whole family regularly
every spring.
LIZA
[darkly]
My Aunt Died of Influenza :
so they said.
MRS. EYNSFORD HILL
[clicks her tongue sympathetically]!!!
LIZA
[in the same tragic tone]
But it’s my belief they
done the old woman in.
MRS. HIGGINS
[puzzled]
Done her in?
LIZA.
Y-e-e-e-es, Lord love you!
Why should she die of Influenza?
She come through diphtheria
right enough the year before.
I saw her with my own eyes.
Fairly blue with it, she was.
They all thought she was dead;
but my father
he kept ladling gin
down her throat
til she came to
so sudden
that she bit the bowl
off the spoon.
MRS. EYNSFORD HILL
[startled]
Dear me!
LIZA
[piling up the indictment]
What call would a woman
with that strength in her
have to die of Influenza?
What become of her new straw hat
that should have come to me?
Somebody pinched it;
and what I say is,
them as pinched it
done her in.
MRS. EYNSFORD HILL.
What does ‘doing her in’ mean?
HIGGINS
[hastily]
Oh, that’s the new small talk.
To do a person in
means to kill them.
MRS. EYNSFORD HILL
[to Eliza, horrified]
You surely don’t believe
that Your Aunt was killed?
LIZA.
Do I not! Them she lived with
would have killed her for
a hat-pin, let alone a hat.
MRS. EYNSFORD HILL.
But it can’t have been right
for your father to pour spirits
down her throat like that.
It might have killed her.
LIZA.
Not her. Gin was mother’s milk to her.
Besides, he’d poured so much down his own throat that he knew the good of it.
MRS. EYNSFORD HILL.
Do you mean that he drank?
LIZA.
Drank! My word!
Something chronic.
MRS. EYNSFORD HILL.
How dreadful for you!
LIZA.
Not a bit. It never did him
no harm what I could see.
But then he did not keep it up regular.
[Cheerfully]
On the burst, as you might say,
from time to time.
And always more agreeable
when he had a drop in.
When he was out of work,
my mother used to give him fourpence
and tell him to go out
and not come back until
he’d drunk himself cheerful
and loving-like.
There’s lots of women
has to make their husbands drunk
to make them fit to live with.
[Now quite at her ease]
You see, it’s like this.
If A Man has a bit of A Conscience,
it always takes him when he’s sober;
and then it makes him low-spirited.
A drop of booze just takes that off
and makes him happy.
[To Freddy, who is in convulsions of suppressed laughter]
Here! what are you sniggering at?
FREDDY.
The new small talk.
You do it so awfully well.
LIZA.
If I was doing it proper,
what was you laughing at?
[To Higgins]
Have I said anything I oughtn’t?
MRS. HIGGINS
[interposing]
Not at all, Miss Doolittle.
LIZA.
Well, that’s a mercy, anyhow.
[Expansively]
What I Always Say is —
HIGGINS
[rising and looking at his watch]
Ahem!
LIZA
[looking round at him; taking the hint; and rising]
Well: I must go.
[They all rise. Freddy goes to The Door]
So pleased to have met you. Good-bye.
[She shakes hands with Mrs. Higgins].
MRS. HIGGINS.
Good-bye.
LIZA.
Good-bye, Colonel Pickering.
PICKERING.
Good-bye, Miss Doolittle.
[They shake hands].
LIZA
[nodding to the others]
Good-bye, all.
FREDDY
[opening the door for her]
Are you walking across The Park,
Miss Doolittle? If so—
LIZA.
Walk! Not bloody likely.
[Sensation].
I am going in a taxi.
[She goes out].
Pickering gasps and sits down. Freddy goes out on the balcony to catch another glimpse of Eliza.
