n the ottoman beside
Eliza, devouring her with her eyes].

FREDDY [coming to their side of the ottoman] I've certainly had the
pleasure.

MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [introducing] My son Freddy.

LIZA. How do you do?

Freddy bows and sits down in the Elizabethan chair, infatuated.

HIGGINS [suddenly] By George, yes: it all comes back to me! [They stare
at him]. Covent Garden! [Lamentably] What a damned thing!

MRS. HIGGINS. Henry, please! [He is about to sit on the edge of the
table]. Don't sit on my writing-table: you'll break it.

HIGGINS [sulkily] Sorry.

He goes to the divan, stumbling into the fender and over the fire-irons
on his way; extricating himself with muttered imprecations; and
finishing his disastrous journey by throwing himself so impatiently on
the divan that he almost breaks it. Mrs. Higgins looks at him, but
controls herself and says nothing.

A long and painful pause ensues.

MRS. HIGGINS [at last, conversationally] Will it rain, do you think?

LIZA. The shallow depression in the west of these islands is likely to
move slowly in an easterly direction. There are no indications of any
great change in the barometrical situation.

FREDDY. Ha! ha! how awfully funny!

LIZA. What is wrong with that, young man? I bet I got it right.

FREDDY. Killing!

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