HIGGINS. What! Ezra D. Wannafeller! He's dead. [He sits down
again carelessly].

DOOLITTLE. Yes: he's dead; and I'm done for. Now did you or did
you not write a letter to him to say that the most original
moralist at present in England, to the best of your knowledge,
was Alfred Doolittle, a common dustman.

HIGGINS. Oh, after your last visit I remember making some silly
joke of the kind.

DOOLITTLE. Ah! you may well call it a silly joke. It put the lid
on me right enough. Just give him the chance he wanted to show
that Americans is not like us: that they recognize and respect
merit in every class of life, however humble. Them words is in
his blooming will, in which, Henry Higgins, thanks to your silly
joking, he leaves me a share in his Pre-digested Cheese Trust
worth three thousand a year on condition that I lecture for his
Wannafeller Moral Reform World League as often as they ask me up
to six times a year.

HIGGINS. The devil he does! Whew! [Brightening suddenly] What a
lark!

PICKERING. A safe thing for you, Doolittle. They won't ask you
twice.

DOOLITTLE. It ain't the lecturing I mind. I'll lecture them blue
in the face, I will, and not turn a hair. It's making a gentleman
of me that I object to. Who asked him to make a gentleman of me?