nics, and the London School of
Economics from their feet for ever. Besides, the business was in some
mysterious way beginning to take care of itself. They had somehow
forgotten their objections to employing other people. They came to the
conclusion that their own way was the best, and that they had really a
remarkable talent for business. The Colonel, who had been compelled for
some years to keep a sufficient sum on current account at his bankers
to make up their deficits, found that the provision was unnecessary:
the young people were prospering. It is true that there was not quite
fair play between them and their competitors in trade. Their week-ends
in the country cost them nothing, and saved them the price of their
Sunday dinners; for the motor car was the Colonel's; and he and Higgins
paid the hotel bills. Mr. F. Hill, florist and greengrocer (they soon
discovered that there was money in asparagus; and asparagus led to
other vegetables), had an air which stamped the business as classy; and
in private life he was still Frederick Eynsford Hill, Esquire. Not that
there was any swank about him: nobody but Eliza knew that he had been
christened Frederick Challoner. Eliza herself swanked like anything.

That is all. That is how it has turned out. It is astonishing how much
Eliza still manages to meddle in the housekeeping at Wimpole Street in
spite of the shop and her own family. And it is notable that though she
never nags her husband, and frankly loves the Colonel as if she were
his favorite daughter, she has never got out of the habit of nagging
Higgins that was established on the fatal night when she won his bet
for him. She snaps his head off on the faintest provocation, or on
none. He no longer dares to tease her by assuming an abysmal
inferiority of Freddy's mind to his own. He storms and bullies and
derides; but she stands up to him so ruthlessly that the Colonel has to
ask her from time to time to be kinder to Higgins; and it is the only
request of his that brings a mulish expression into her face. Nothing
but some emergency or calamity great enough to break down all likes and
dislikes, and throw them both back on their common humanity--and may
they be spared any such trial!--will ever alter this. She knows that
Higgins does not need her, just as her father did not need her. The
very scrupulousness with which he told her that day that he had become
used to having her there, and dependent on her for all sorts of l