of luck. I'll show 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.

MRS. 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, baby-like, making an intolerable grievance of it] Why,
this is the girl I jotted down last night. She's no use: I've got all
the records I want of the Lisson Grove lingo; and I'm not going to
waste another cylinder on it. [To the girl] Be off with you: I don't
want you.

THE FLOWER GIRL. Don't you be so saucy. You ain't heard what I come for
yet. [To Mrs. Pearce, who is waiting at the door for further
instruction] Did you tell him I come in a taxi?

MRS. PEARCE. Nonsense, girl! what do you think a gentleman like Mr.
Higgins cares what you came in?

THE FLOWER GIRL. Oh, we are proud! He ain't above giving lessons, not
him: I heard him say so. Well, I ain't come here to ask for any
compliment; and if my money's not good enough I can go elsewhere.

HIGGINS. Good enough for what?

THE FLOWER GIRL. Good enough for ye--oo. Now you know, don't you? I'm
come to have lessons, I am. And to pay for em too: make no mistake.

HIGGINS [stupent] WELL!!! [Recovering his breath with a gasp] What do
you expect me to say to you?

THE FLOWER GIRL. Well, if you was a gentleman, you might ask me to sit
down, I think. Don't I tell you I'm bringing you business?

HIGGINS. Pickering: shall we ask this baggage to sit down or shall we
throw her out of the window?

THE FLOWER GIRL [running away in terror to the piano, where she turns
at bay] Ah--ah--ah--ow--ow--ow--oo! [Wounded and whimpering] I won't be
called a baggage when I've