Not that the Wimpole Street bachelors objected. When she consulted
them, Higgins declined to be bothered about her housing problem when
that solution was so simple. Eliza's desire to have Freddy in the house
with her seemed of no more importance than if she had wanted an extra
piece of bedroom furniture. Pleas as to Freddy's character, and the
moral obligation on him to earn his own living, were lost on Higgins.
He denied that Freddy had any character, and declared that if he tried
to do any useful work some competent person would have the trouble of
undoing it: a procedure involving a net loss to the community, and
great unhappiness to Freddy himself, who was obviously intended by
Nature for such light work as amusing Eliza, which, Higgins declared,
was a much more useful and honorable occupation than working in the
city. When Eliza referred again to her project of teaching phonetics,
Higgins abated not a jot of his violent opposition to it. He said she
was not within ten years of being qualified to meddle with his pet
subject; and as it was evident that the Colonel agreed with him, she
felt she could not go against them in this grave matter, and that she
had no right, without Higgins's consent, to exploit the knowledge he
had given her; for his knowledge seemed to her as much his private
property as his watch: Eliza was no communist. Besides, she was
superstitiously devoted to them both, more entirely and frankly after
her marriage than before it.
It was the Colonel who finally solved the problem, which had cost him
much perplexed cogitation. He one day asked Eliza, rather shyly,
whether she had quite given up her notion of keeping a flower shop. 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. The Colonel confessed that when he said that, he had not
quite recovered from the dazzling impression of the day before. They
broke the matter to Higgins that evening. The sole comment vouchsafed
by him very nearly led to a serious quarrel with Eliza. It was to the
effect that she would have in Freddy an ideal errand boy.
Freddy himself was next sounded on the subject. He said he had been
thinking of a shop himself; though it had presented itself to his
pennilessness as a small place in which Eliza should sell tobacco at
one counter whilst he sold newspapers at the opposite one. But he
agreed that it would be extraordinarily jolly to go early every morning
with Eliza to Covent Garden and buy flowers on the scene of their first
meeting: a sentiment which earned him many kisses from his wife. He
added that he had always been afraid to propose anything of the sort,
because Clara would make an awful row about a step that must damage her
matrimonial chances, and his mother could not be expected to like it
after clinging for so many years to that step of the social ladder on
which retail trade is impossible.