you've mislaid anything or when you get a little impatient. Now
it doesn't matter before me: I'm used to it. But you really must
not swear before the girl.

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.