hat-pin, let alone a hat.

MRS. EYNSFORD HILL. But it can't have been right for your father
to pour spirits down her throat like that. It might have killed
her.

LIZA. Not her. Gin was mother's milk to her. Besides, he'd poured
so much down his own throat that he knew the good of it.

MRS. EYNSFORD HILL. Do you mean that he drank?

LIZA. Drank! My word! Something chronic.

MRS. EYNSFORD HILL. How dreadful for you!

LIZA. Not a bit. It never did him no harm what I could see. But
then he did not keep it up regular. [Cheerfully] On the burst, as
you might say, from time to time. And always more agreeable when
he had a drop in. When he was out of work, my mother used to give
him fourpence and tell him to go out and not come back until he'd
drunk himself cheerful and loving-like. There's lots of women has
to make their husbands drunk to make them fit to live with. [Now
quite at her ease] You see, it's like this. If a man has a bit of
a conscience, it always takes him when he's sober; and then it
makes him low-spirited. A drop of booze just takes that off and
makes him happy. [To Freddy, who is in convulsions of suppressed
laughter] Here! what are you sniggering at?

FREDDY. The new small talk. You do it so awfully well.