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.

Doolittle [softening his manner in deference to her sex] That’s the tragedy of it, ma’am.  It’s easy to say chuck it; but I haven’t the nerve.  Which one of us has?  We’re all intimidated.  Intimidated, ma’am:  that’s what we are.  What is there for me if I chuck it but the workhouse in my old age?  I have to dye my hair already to keep my job as a dustman.  If I was one of the deserving poor, and had put by a bit, I could chuck it; but then why should I, acause the deserving poor might as well be millionaires for all the happiness they ever has.  They don’t know what happiness is.  But I, as one of the undeserving poor, have nothing between me and the pauper’s uniform but this here blasted three thousand a year that shoves me into the middle class.  (Excuse the expression, ma’am:  you’d use it yourself if you had my provocation).  They’ve got you every way you turn:  it’s a choice between the Skilly of the workhouse and the Char Bydis of the middle class; and I haven’t the nerve for the workhouse.  Intimidated:  that’s what I am.  Broke.  Bought up.  Happier men than me will call for my dust, and touch me for their tip; and I’ll look on helpless, and envy them.  And that’s what your son has brought me to. [He is overcome by emotion].

Mrs. Higgins.  Well, I’m very glad you’re not going to do anything foolish, Mr. Doolittle.  For this solves the problem of Eliza’s future.  You can provide for her now.

Doolittle [with melancholy resignation] Yes, ma’am; I’m expected to provide for everyone now, out of three thousand a year.