MRS. HIGGINS: Hasn’t it suddenly turned chilly?
LADY EYNSFORD-HILL: I do hope we won’t have any unseasonable cold spells. They bring on so much influenza and the whole of our family is susceptible to it.
ELIZA: (In a refined manner throughout) My aunt died of influenza, so they said. But it is my belief that they done the old woman in.
LADY BOXINGTON: "Done her in?"
**ELIZA: Yes, Lord love you. Why should she die of influenza when she’d come through diphtheria right enough the year before? Fairly blue with it, she was. They all thought she was dead, but my father, he kept ladling gin down her throat. (Professor Higgins groans) Then she come to so soon, she bit the bowl off the spoon.
LADY EYNSFORD-HILL: Dear me!
ELIZA: Now what call would a woman with that strength in her have to die of influenza? And what become of her new straw hat that should have come to me? Somebody pinched it, and what I say is, them as pinched it, done her in.
LORD BOXINGTON: "Done her in?" "Done her in" did you say?
LADY BOXINGTON: Whatever does it mean?
PROFESSOR HIGGINS: Ah, that’s the new small talk. "To do somebody in" means to kill them.
LADY EYNSFORD-HILL: But you surely don’t believe your aunt was killed?
ELIZA: Do I not! Them she lived with would have killed her for a hat pin, let alone a hat.
LADY EYNSFORD-HILL: But it can’t have been right for your father to pour sprits down her throat like that. It might have killed her!
ELIZA: Not her. Gin was mother’s milk to her. Besides, he poured so much down his own throat he knew the good of it.
LORD BOXINGTON: Do you mean that he drank?
ELIZA: Drank? My word, something chronic. (Freddy laughs, Eliza addresses him) Dear, what are you sniggering at?
**FREDDY: **(Plum firmly in gob) It’s the new small talk. You do it so awfully well.
ELIZA: Well, if I was doing it proper, what were you sniggering at? Have I said anything I oughtn’t?