I was happy. I was free. I touched pretty nigh everybody for
money when I wanted it, same as I touched you, Henry Higgins. Now
I am worrited; tied neck and heels; and everybody touches me for
money. It's a fine thing for you, says my solicitor. Is it? says
I. You mean it's a good thing for you, I says. When I was a poor
man and had a solicitor once when they found a pram in the dust
cart, he got me off, and got shut of me and got me shut of him as
quick as he could. Same with the doctors: used to shove me out of
the hospital before I could hardly stand on my legs, and nothing
to pay. Now they finds out that I'm not a healthy man and can't
live unless they looks after me twice a day. In the house I'm not
let do a hand's turn for myself: somebody else must do it and
touch me for it. A year ago I hadn't a relative in the world
except two or three that wouldn't speak to me. Now I've fifty, and
not a decent week's wages among the lot of them. I have to live
for others and not for myself: that's middle class morality. You
talk of losing Eliza. Don't you be anxious: I bet she's on my
doorstep by this: she that could support herself easy by selling
flowers if I wasn't respectable. And the next one to touch me
will be you, Henry Higgins. I'll have to learn to speak middle
class language from you, instead of speaking proper English.
That's where you'll come in; and I daresay that's what you done
it for.

MRS. HIGGINS. But, my dear Mr. Doolittle, you need not suffer all
this if you are really in earnest. Nobody can force you to accept
this bequest. You can repudiate it. Isn't that so, Colonel
Pickering?

PICKERING. I believe so.