HIGGINS [indignantly] I swear! [Most emphatically] I never swear. I detest the habit. What the devil do you mean?
MRS. PEARCE [stolidly] That’s what I mean, sir. You swear a great deal too much. I don’t mind your damning and blasting, and what the devil and where the devil and who the devil—
HIGGINS. Really! Mrs. Pearce: this language from your lips!
MRS. PEARCE [not to be put off]—but there is a certain word I must ask you not to use. The girl has just used it herself because the bath was too hot. It begins with the same letter as bath. She knows no better: she learnt it at her mother’s knee. But she must not hear it from your lips.
HIGGINS [loftily] I cannot charge myself with having ever uttered it, Mrs. Pearce. [She looks at him steadfastly. He adds, hiding an uneasy conscience with a judicial air] Except perhaps in a moment of extreme and justifiable excitement.
MRS. PEARCE. Only this morning, sir, you applied it to your boots, to the butter, and to the brown bread.
HIGGINS. Oh, that! Mere alliteration, Mrs. Pearce, natural to a poet.
MRS. PEARCE. Well, sir, whatever you choose to call it, I beg you not to let the girl hear you repeat it.
HIGGINS. Oh, very well, very well. Is that all?
MRS. PEARCE. No, sir. We shall have to be very particular with this girl as to personal cleanliness.