a Deputy Commander of the MLF, acting as the Senior National Representative (Colonel);

Colonel Pickering?

LIZA. Are you nervous, Colonel?

LIZA. It is not the first time for me, Colonel.

LIZA. Goodbye, Colonel Pickering.

DOOLITTLE. Who told you that, Colonel?

THE PARLOR-MAID. Colonel Pickering. [She withdraws].

THE GENTLEMAN. I am Colonel Pickering. Who are you?

Colonel Pickering can go on with the bridegroom.

You can repudiate it. Isnt that so, Colonel Pickering?

LIZA. Do my clothes belong to me or to Colonel Pickering?

So glad to see you again, Colonel Pickering.

HOSTESS. Is that your adopted daughter, Colonel Pickering?

Goodbye, Colonel Pickering. Goodbye, Professor Higgins.

Meanwhile the Colonel has been having it out with Higgins about Eliza.

LIZA [shaking hands with him] Colonel Pickering, is it not?

I shant interfere. It's time for us to go, Colonel.

My manners are exactly the same as Colonel Pickering's.

Do you know Colonel Pickering, the author of Spoken Sanscrit?

MRS HIGGINS. Very good of you to come. [Introducing] Colonel Pickering.

You see, Eliza, all men are not confirmed old bachelors like me and the Colonel.

THE PARLOR-MAID [at the door] Mr Henry, maam, is downstairs with Colonel Pickering.

DOOLITTLE. And youll come to the church, Colonel, and put me through straight?

But this last is really too much. Dont you think so, Colonel Pickering?

DOOLITTLE. No: that aint the natural way, Colonel: it's only the middle class way.

LIZA. Thats not true. He treats a flower girl as if she was a duchess.

The Colonel thinks you should never go out without ten pounds in your pocket.

I should be uneasy about you and her if she were less fond of Colonel Pickering.

LIZA. If the Colonel says I must, I - I'll [almost sobbing] I'll demean myself.

MRS HIGGINS. Go upstairs and tell Miss Doolittle that Mr Henry and the Colonel are here.

FIRST LANDING FOOTMAN. Miss Doolittle, Colonel Pickering, Professor Higgins.

SECOND LANDING FOOTMAN. Miss Doolittle, Colonel Pickering, Professor Higgins.

It was the Colonel who finally solved the problem, which had cost him much perplexed cogitation.

Colonel Pickering prefers double Gloucester to Stilton; and you dont notice the difference.

[To Pickering] It was artful of you, Colonel; but I bear no malice: I should have done the same myself.

MRS PEARCE. If you are to sit with him and the Colonel and be taught you will have to do the same.

[Exchange of bows. The Colonel brings the Chippendale chair a little forward between Mrs Hill and Mrs Higgins, and sits down].

You know I cant go back to the gutter, as you call it, and that I have no real friends in the world but you and the Colonel.

The Colonel confessed that when he said that, he had not quite recovered from the dazzling impression of the day before.

MRS HIGGINS [quieting Henry with a touch] Colonel Pickering: will you tell me what is the exact state of things in Wimpole Street?

Colonel Pickering: dont you realize that when Eliza walked into Wimpole Street, something walked in with her?

She replied that she had thought of it, but had put it out of her head, because the Colonel had said, that day at Mrs Higgins's, that it would never do.

DOOLITTLE [sitting down beside Pickering] I feel uncommon nervous about the ceremony, Colonel. I wish youd come and see me through it.

LIZA [to Pickering, taking no apparent notice of Higgins, and working away deftly] Will you drop me altogether now that the experiment is over, Colonel Pickering?

Thus Freddy and Eliza, now Mr and Mrs Eynsford Hill, would have spent a penniless honeymoon but for a wedding present of ť500 from the Colonel to Eliza.

But for the reassuring presence and quietude of her friend the Colonel she would run for her life, even back to Drury Lane.

Their week-ends in the country cost them nothing, and saved them the price of their Sunday dinners; for the motor car was the Colonel's; and he and Higgins paid the hotel bills.

He is nicely dressed, is treated by the Colonel as an equal, loves her unaffectedly, and is not her master, nor ever likely to dominate her in spite of his advantage of social standing.

But when it comes to business, to the life that she really leads as distinguished from the life of dreams and fancies, she likes Freddy and she likes the Colonel; and she does not like Higgins and Mr Doolittle.

The Colonel, who had been compelled for some years to keep a sufficient sum on current account at his bankers to make up their deficits, found that the provision was unnecessary: the young people were prospering.