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Contrary to popular belief, Professor Henry Higgins was not, in fact, a hopelessly obtuse man. Boasting a highly-trained intelligence, and competence in most aspects of his professional life, he also possessed a certain degree of self-awareness, which encompassed -- at least in theory -- the notion that he might not always be in the right.
But why admit to fallibility, when all of London consistently shaped itself to his singular narrative: that of Henry Higgins, intrepid hero of language and of every storyline in which he featured?
After the wedding party had left for St Paul’s Church, Higgins spent the better part of the morning upon his mother’s settee, alternately scowling at her Burne Jones paintings and at her Cecil Lawson landscape. On three separate occasions, when a motor-car sounded as if it were stopping at the Chelsea Embankment, he dashed over to peer through the chintz curtains into the street, but he came away disappointed each time.
While thusly occupied, Higgins found himself replaying his last conversation with Eliza in his head, as if she had spoken the words into his Edison’s phonograph:
You turn everything against me. But you know very well that you’re nothing but a bully. You know I can’t go back to the gutter, as you call it, and that I have no real friends in the world but you and the Colonel... You think I must go back to Wimpole Street because I have nowhere else to go. But don’t you be too sure that you have me under your feet to be trampled on and talked down.
In the privacy of his thoughts, Higgins felt his righteous anger finally seep away. Nothing but a bully. Surely that was not how the girl truly felt about him or Pickering?
No, no, Eliza was simply giving vent to her feminine emotions. When she’d calmed down, she would undoubtedly see the error of her ways. She would waltz back into the room on Pickering’s arm, and they would have a laugh about the wedding (maybe Eliza would “do the voices”, and Pickering would let out his deep, sonorous guffaw), and they would continue at Wimpole Street as they had for the last six months: three old bachelors together.
After luncheon at the Chelsea Embankment, which he’d had to send in large part away unconsumed, he repaired to Wimpole Street, and transferred his scowls to his Piranesis and his filing cabinets (with the three drawers devoted to Eliza open, this week’s cards still awaiting categorisation) and his life-sized scale diagram of the human head which Pickering had christened Bertie.
Four o’clock came and went, and then five o’clock. No Eliza. For that matter, no Pickering. What the devil could the both of them have gotten up to? When Mrs Pearce came in with the tea tray, Higgins had resorted to pacing up and down the length of the room.
Eliza must be still angry, and still determined to remain at Chelsea Embankment. But that did not explain Pickering’s absence -- unless good old Pick had stayed for tea, too, to try to see if he could talk her ‘round.
Higgins found he had little appetite for his tea, for the ham and Stilton Eliza had failed to fetch him, and for his own high dudgeon. How could Eliza call him cold, unfeeling and selfish, when here he was demonstrably suffering from the prospect of spending the rest of the year (and maybe the rest of his life!) alone.
Well, not entirely alone. He still had Pickering.
He had to admit: it had been a most excellent idea for Pickering to move into Wimpole Street that February (and not just because it had been Higgins’ own idea). What a remarkable coincidence, their meeting outside St. Paul’s and getting carried away over dinner by the London School’s 130 distinct vowel sounds, that had kept them up all night and into the next day! The Colonel had known everything about language that Higgins didn't, and vice versa: they had everything to learn from one another and brains enough to do it. Now their work on the second volume of Spoken Sanskrit and other south Indian dialects was finally coming to fruition; Pickering had even kindly offered to pay for the costs of republishing Higgins’ most obscure paper on Icelandic vernacular (with glossary) from his British India tea concession dividends.
Too, Pickering had been nothing short of a godsend with Eliza. Had the Colonel not been at his side throughout the process -- smoothing over the creature’s ruffled feathers with his mellifluous syllables and gentlemanly manners, always exemplifying decorum and good breeding -- their reckless experiment might not have turned out as well as it had, or at all.
It was as Higgins had always said. Women upset everything, and even the most peaceable would eventually try to drag men onto the wrong track. Men, on the other hand, were a source of agreement and accord, as amply demonstrated by none other than Higgins’ amiable partner-in-investigation.
Despite the lateness of the hour, Higgins discovered he had recovered enough of his good humour to whistle at Mrs Pearce when she emerged to remove the tea things.
Eliza would return, as errant children tended to (even if Higgins occasionally gave his mother some reason to regret this). And even if she did not, he still had Pickering. Together, they had phonetics, the science of speech, and with it, the fount of Art and civilisation; together, they claimed the Universal Alphabet and the Indian Method. Who needed a woman, when one had such dependable reserves of masculinity to hand?
Just then, and much to Higgins’ relief, Pickering finally made an appearance in the doorway of the laboratory.
The man was still dressed in the wool frock-coat and suit that he had worn to Chelsea and then to church. For some reason, he had not handed his hat and overcoat to Mrs Pearce at the front door, but held them stiffly folded almost as though he were still at-arms.
“Pickering, old boy --!” Here, Higgins found his enthusiastic tones almost percussively truncated at the sight of Pickering’s thoughtful, sombre demeanour.
It had been on the tip of his tongue to ask Pickering if he’d had tea, and if not, to propose a late supper at the Reform Club. Instead, what issued forth was, “Where is she?”
Pickering lifted his chin. Almost, the firelight turned him into a splendid bas-relief of some Grecian scholar. His moustaches bristled with some hidden concern, and for once Higgins could not tell what it was. “Eliza? She’s at your mother’s.”
Higgins’ teeth ground together; he unclenched his jaw with some difficulty. “And do you know when she plans to return?”
“I’m afraid she’s not returning, at least that’s what she told me.” Pickering hung his head uncomfortably. “And small wonder. We have treated her shabbily, Higgins. I’m ashamed to admit I hadn’t realised it before.”
Six hours -- no, seven -- of waiting, and worrying, and fretting over all kinds of dire endings that culminated in lonely solitude, would have provoked a reaction from a plaster saint: and Henry Higgins was at the best of times hardly that. As such, unsurprisingly, this was the reaction that emanated forth:
“Treated her shabbily? Treated her shabbily? The nerve of that infamous creature, that female Judas, when she inveigled me into lavishing my knowledge on her, only to betray me to Professor Nepan! The gall of that pitiless jade, to accuse me of being callous and unfeeling, after I took her under my roof and into my laboratory and shared with her my mother and my closest companions and the intimate details of my household expenses! You have nothing to be ashamed of, Pickering, and neither have I, because we have been the soul of generosity and kindness and patience with that girl, and no Christian could say a word to the contrary!”
This splendidly-articulated declamation, all fine fricatives and crisp consonants, lifted to the ceiling and rattled the laryngoscope and rows of tiny organ pipes and lamp chimneys. Higgins would have been rather proud of the effect, had he the wherewithal for anything other than this emission of outrage.
Pickering looked stunned. Higgins thought at first this might have been as a result of said linguistic fireworks, but his friend soon put paid to that notion.
“Higgins, I cannot agree at all to what you say. It is simply untrue, and worse, it is unkind.”
Higgins was preparing to issue a heated rebuttal to this sally, when Pickering supplemented, hesitantly: “And I have come to realise that I’ve imposed on your hospitality for long enough. It’s high time I returned to India, and let you get on with your life here in Wimpole Street.”
Higgins frowned. Perhaps the hours of interminable waiting had impeded his hearing, for surely Pickering could not have said that he was returning to India? He opened his mouth to seek clarification, only for Pickering to add, slowly,
“You may not know any better - - after all, your single-mindedness is part of your great genius! But I own no such excuse. And I’m afraid that, for the last six months, I have thought only about myself.”
This astounding pronouncement piled astonishment upon astonishment. Higgins only realised his jaw had fallen open when he heard a prolonged anomalous vowel sound escape his lips.
Belatedly, he shut his mouth with a snap. His temples were pounding, and his chest felt obstructed by a fomenting, foreign thundercloud of emotion that he could not at first name.
Hurriedly, he filled his lungs to optimal capacity, and then let fly.
“Indeed, you have no excuse. You’ve been selfish, you say? I quite agree! How dare you now propose to leave after six months, without giving thought to how I would get along without you? It was you who thrust the experiment with Eliza upon me; you who bet me all the expenses of the experiment I couldn’t do it. I would never have cast my hard-earned pearls into the swill at Covent Garden, or opened home and hearth to that ragamuffin, had you not tempted me, like Eve with the apple… And now you’re not simply content for that trollop to leave me; you insist on depriving me of your company as well! I simply won’t have it. You can stay, or go to the devil: whichever you please.”
As previously noted, Higgins was not so obtuse as to genuinely believe that he was always in the right. Pickering had always been too gallant to point it out before, though, and Higgins had always gotten away with it. Until now.
This time, however, Pickering shot him a reproachful look that was as dignified as it was restrained, muttered something about the need to collect his things, and left the laboratory with full military colours flying.
*
The aftermath of Pickering’s departure (from the room, that is, at least for the time being) left Higgins in quite a state. He had never before lost his composure so completely as to have flung anyone’s slippers after them, as Eliza had, but as he sat down beside the fireplace, he had to admit his fingers now itched to do so. He also found himself breathing heavily, as if unable to dispel the heaviness that had stopped up his throat and overtaken his lungs.
Pickering couldn’t leave. Not while they still had work on both Indian dialects and the Universal Alphabet to complete, not while they had the remainder of the season’s promenade concerts to attend, not while the pantry still possessed unconsumed stock of the Darjeeling tea that only Pickering drank! Only this afternoon, Higgins had the occasion to contemplate his life at Wimpole Street without Eliza in it; he found the thought of Wimpole Street without his stalwart foil was too awful to contemplate.
Why, without Pickering’s gently humanising influence, Henry Higgins might have to start conducting himself with civility to all!
The horrifying prospect was enough to galvanise him, belatedly, into action. He flew up the stairs and across the corridor to Pickering’s room, and barged in without knocking.
The guest room which Pickering had occupied for six months was adjacent to Higgins’ own bedroom, with windows that overlooked the small garden of Harley Place. Higgins could not remember ever having entered it during Pickering’s tenure.
In the event, he should have expected the severe tidiness, the neat bed (likely Pickering made it himself freshly in the morning, without troubling the parlour-maid), the Spartan lack of personal knick-knacks about the place, save for three small photographs: one of an older woman, perhaps Pickering’s mother, a group of infantrymen (presumably Pickering’s army unit), and the last of a much younger Pickering and another officer standing very close together. Higgins could not say why, but this last struck a piquant note in his already troubled breast.
Pickering was standing before the open wardrobe in his vest and shirtsleeves, methodically extricating and folding his clothing, and transferring the folded items into his suitcase, which lay open on the bed.
When Higgins burst in, Pickering straightened, almost ceremoniously. Higgins had not before paid much heed to the Colonel’s ramrod-stiff bearing, but he could not now deny Pickering’s impressive composure. Why, it was almost enough to move a fellow to salute!
To prevent any inadvertent gesticulation, Higgins shut the door behind him and shoved his hands into his pockets.
“What in the world are you doing, Pick?”
“Heading back to India, as I’d said,” came the dignified rejoinder. “I now see it’s for the best, and not just for you.”
Higgins leaned on the wardrobe door to forestall the removal of more of its contents. “But why?” he asked hotly. “Don’t tell me you give two hoots about India. Why in the world would you think it was best to leave me?”
Pickering was compelled to step away from the wardrobe as well as Higgins’ interposing body. He walked over to the window and gazed out into the quiet garden vista. “You really can’t see it, can you? I had thought it’s just your way: I believed that you did care, in your way. But I see I was wrong.”
“About my feelings for Eliza?” Higgins asked, rather at sea. Rallying, he exclaimed, “Even if so, and I’m not admitting to any of it, that's no reason for you to leave. Do you feel I’ve treated you shabbily?”
Pickering sighed. “No, quite the opposite. But all the same, I cannot remain here, not when my presence has been such a hindrance to you. I have in the past been too quick to jump to your defence, and to overlook your shortcomings, perhaps because … because … well!”
Abruptly he broke off, and returned to his valise, into which he began to transfer the textbooks from the nightstand. As he did so, he muttered, as if to himself,“I didn’t think at all, did I? It was convenient to move into Wimpole Street, and work with such a celebrated philologist. Such an excellent arrangement that I did not stop to consider the drawbacks.”
Higgins took a step forward. The floorboards felt alarmingly unsteady under his feet, as if the prospect of losing Pickering had completely up-ended his word.
He confronted his friend: “Would you like me to apologise?”
No response came. The desperation of the times called for desperate measures. Higgins took hold of Pickering’s valise and closed it decisively. Then, for good measure, he sat on top of it, prohibiting any further access.
The words spilled from him, haphazard syllables and sibilants that could have come from a man completely unpractised in philology. “Don’t go, Pick. It was unfair of me to blame you for what’s happened with Eliza. It was, as you say, untrue, and moreover unkind too -- when in fact you have been the very soul of patience, with her and with me. She said to me that you always treated her like a duchess, and so you have. You have nothing to reproach yourself for. You were right and I was wrong.”
He choked on the last word. After a moment of spluttering, he recovered sufficient self-possession to ask, “Are you satisfied? I said I was sorry! Will you forgive me, and stay?”
Pickering eyed Higgins squarely, as if considering seizing him and manhandling him from his perch upon the valise. In the event, the Colonel didn’t follow through (undoubtedly, it would not be in the best traditions of the British Army to engage in fisticuffs with an untrained civilian). Instead, he rubbed his forehead as if his head was hurting. Slowly, he said:
“Did you not suggest to Eliza that she should marry me? She mentioned something of the sort at tea. And then -- forgive me, perhaps I did not fully appreciate the context -- there was some suggestion that she might marry you instead…?”
Higgins sat back on the suitcase, astounded. “What? Nothing could be further from the truth: the impertinent baggage is ly -- I mean, exaggerating! In fact, she vowed she would not marry me if I asked her!”
Pickering frowned. “Why would she have said that if the suggestion of marriage were not first put into her head?” (The By you went unspoken, but they lingered in Pickering’s reproachful blue eyes all the same.)
Higgins waved a prevaricating arm. “In the event, she won’t hear of marrying you or me. Wants to marry Freddy Eynsford-Hill! We’ll see her in hell first.”
This time, Pickering massaged his temples. “Do you not imagine I would be married, if I had a wish to be?” he asked. “I believed we had an understanding… That is, I thought you understood me.”
Higgins leaped off the suitcase and to his feet. “I do! I do. You’re an old bachelor without any urge for wifely companionship: as you know I feel exactly the same. My mother may wish for me to marry, but let me assure you, my good fellow, that nothing is further from my own wishes on the matter.”
Pickering hesitated, then took a slow step forward to confront Higgins. They were of a height, as well as of a size -- the Colonel had previously borrowed the occasional shirt or smoking jacket of Higgins’ when his things were being laundered -- but Higgins had not before noticed how robust Pickering’s physique was, still: broad in the chest and shoulder like a much younger man.
“Actually,” Pickering said, “I believe your mother has given up any expectation of the kind. But, you see, most men are the marrying sort. And your talk of marriage, Henry, it has … well, it has made me think that you might have awakened to the urge for matrimony at last. And further, that it is my presence in your house that has been impeding pursuits in this arena.”
It was Higgins’ turn to frown; such was his perturbation that he did not remark on Pickering’s use of his Christian name. “What in the world are you on about?” he demanded. “My urges, matrimonial or otherwise, have never required awakening. Let me assure you, I have them like any member of our sex. I am of normal virility. I am not impotent: I am not sterile. It is merely that I have never been promiscuous, or promiscuously susceptible, to the wiles of womenkind!”
This was the truth, or at least as much of the truth as Higgins had ever admitted to himself. In the same vein, he continued:
“I shall never get into the way of liking young women: some habits lie too deep to be changed. A girl in love is jealous, exacting, suspicious, and a damned nuisance; her only desire is to destroy your happiness and remake it in her own image. Don’t blame me for detesting the faults beyond measure which nature has given to women! Whereas a man, on the other hand…”
Here Higgins drew up short, for the utterance brought with it images of his convivial evenings with his erstwhile companion, examining diphthongs and conjugations, and collaborating on the thrilling experiment with Eliza. How agreeable it had been to live at Wimpole Street with the Colonel, with his easy-going disposition and handsome moustache and gentlemanly manners!
As he opened his mouth to give vent to such sentiments, he realised how close to one another they were standing: so close he could appreciate the pleasing maturity of Pickering’s face, the lines left by time and India’s sun. Here was none of the callow youth that so exacerbated Higgins’ disinterest! Instead …
Pickering eyed him steadily. There was something dawning in those blue eyes; a realisation that Higgins was not sure he was prepared to confront. Deflecting, he resumed his seat on Pickering’s valise, and addressed his concluding remarks, peevishly, to his slippers:
“Why can’t we remain as we are, two bachelors together? Three, if Eliza will stay too and not insist on her blasted independence?”
“Eliza will not. And I rather think that is for the best, for all of us.” Pickering paused; his tone was very quiet as he said, “And as for me…”
When no more was forthcoming, Higgins finally seized Pickering’s starched shirt-cuff and demanded, “What about you, Pick? Out with it! You can’t just leave me without telling me why, blast it all, I won’t have it!”
Pickering finally sat down on the bed beside Higgins and the valise. In the same quiet, changed tone of voice, he said:
“Then, Henry, I will confess it. I have never been drawn to the charms of womankind. There are no women or wives in the Army. Instead, my preferences … my urges, such as they are … they are not uncommon among men and between all classes of men, even though the church and polite society and the common law might disagree.”
Once again, the thunderclap: astonishment piled upon utter astonishment. This time, Higgins managed to close his mouth before he could let out any embarrassing noises. He was belatedly cognisant of the meaningful photograph on the mantel of Pickering and another man; even more cognisant of the intimacy of their present position, side by side on Pickering’s bed.
He clutched Pickering’s sleeve and exclaimed, “Good heavens, is that all there is to it? I am a man of the world, an intimate of the philosophers of antiquity. Did you think your preferences would shock me? -- that I would turn you out of my house because of them? The Greeks celebrated male intimacy as the pinnacle of civilisation! In his Symposium, Plato -- I forget the actual words, but he describes a whole state comprising lovers and their beloved, and said they’d abstain from all dishonour and lift one another up in word and deed… Women may not be able to help themselves, but their love invariably makes a man weaker. Whereas, unlike a woman, a man wouldn’t need to drag you down to make love to you.”
Pickering’s lips curved in a small smile. He made no attempt to remove his sleeve from Higgins’ grasp, or indeed to remove any other part of his person from Higgins’ proximity. Softly, he said, “Sadly, we don’t live in ancient Greece. The practice is illicit in England as it is elsewhere.”
"Well, I’ve always thought that was rubbish,” Higgins muttered. He licked his lips, and watched Pickering mirroring him. “On what principle should be founded that a practice distasteful to clergymen and the chattering classes should be illegal for all?"
Pickering hesitated, before moving even closer. His keen blue gaze was riveting. “Is it a practice distasteful to you, do you think?” he asked, in a tone that did nothing to disguise his meaning.
Higgins could not recall having ever been in such proximity with any man (or indeed with any one, if one didn’t count Philip Harcourt behind the sixth form common rooms at Winchester, or Lady Violet Robinson on his mother’s settee). He certainly didn’t recall it being this stimulating: the rising heat of another body, the sensation of another’s fast breath upon his skin…
Clearing his throat, he said, thickly, “Why don’t we allow ourselves another experiment?”
Pickering chuckled. "Another wager? What if it turns out as well as our experiment with our flower girl?”
“It could hardly turn out worse, now, could it, given what’s happened,” Higgins snorted.
Though a less romantic invitation had seldom been issued, that did not hinder Pickering -- who, it had been said, was used to Higgins’ ways -- and who now accepted said invitation with the same generosity of spirit that he had showed to all of Higgins’ other foibles and obligingly leaned in to kiss him.
Higgins had found their first experiment irresistible: Eliza had been deliciously low, horribly dirty, their wager to imbue her with a duchess’ manners thrillingly illicit. He approached this second Rubicon with the same game curiosity, and was astonished to find that, indeed, another man’s illicit embrace was thrillingly dirty, and delicious, and utterly irresistible.
Or maybe it was just because of Pickering: kissing him with the same enthusiasm as he applied to syntagmic phenomena, with a philologist’s superior technical knowledge of labial and tongue placement; the taste of Darjeeling on his mouth and the soldierly strength of his arms and the pleasant prickling of his moustache against Higgins’ philtrum and upper lip.
When they separated, Higgins discovered he was somewhat short of breath: a sign that his technique needed practice. It had to be said, Pickering was breathing rather unevenly as well, and there was a meaningful sparkle in his eye.
“Can we count this preliminary bout an early success?” he enquired, a remark which was calculated to arouse Higgins’ competitive spirits, as well as notably arousing other physiological aspects of Higgins (who was pleased to observe this evidence of the normal virility he had claimed not ten minutes before).
“We’ll just have to make sure,” Higgins said, shoving Pickering’s valise to the floor to make more room on the bed, before taking his Colonel emphatically into his arms.
Higgins was never one to let inexperience get in the way of success; he more than made up for it with the same single-minded eagerness that he applied to any new feat of learning. As expected, Pickering was as gentlemanly in the bedroom as he was in ballrooms and drawing rooms, and as gallant a teacher in the arts of love as he had been in language.
In like vein, they proceeded with the act of love between men: without scruples or remorse or misgivings of conscience, but instead with an electric slide of skin against hirsute skin, the smell of manly perspiration and the sensation of another man’s unerring grasp -- and finally, a culmination of six months’ worth of common enterprise, and four decades of splendid isolation, in the form of an entirely masculine climax.
In the aftermath, Higgins found himself quite unmanned. His body was filled with lassitude; his spirits enervated by the new and thrilling experience, much as they had been on the night of the ambassador’s party, although, of course, tonight’s was an entirely different accomplishment.
“What a triumph,” he announced to Pickering, “an unqualified success! The ancient philosophers had had the right of it -- how piquant a man’s love is, how ultimately satisfying!”
Pickering lifted himself up on one elbow. The moonlight tempered the lines in his face, making him young again, like the soldier in the photograph. “I’m glad I’ve satisfied you,” he said, laughter in his voice, and Higgins belatedly understood that the act of love was usually a mutual affair.
“Upon my word, Pick, why didn’t you say something earlier? Come here at once -- where the devil are you going?” For Pickering had risen from the bed with not a stitch on: and all at once Higgins was seized with the terrifying prospect of the man making good on his threat to leave.
Pickering paused in surprise, and then his face softened when he caught sight of Higgins’ expression.
“Only to draw the curtains,” he promised, “and then I’m coming back to take my turn at bat.”
*
It was indeed fortuitous that Pickering had drawn the curtains that night, so that the morning wouldn’t scandalise the pigeons of Wimpole Street. Not to mention Mrs Pearce, whom they could hear bustling about meaningfully downstairs.
Such of the sky which could be seen through the sliver in the Morris chintz was bright blue, heralding a brand-new day.
Higgins awakened in tremendous spirits, and felt moved to convey to Pickering what the great philosophers had to say about the pleasures of the flesh. Fortunately, Pickering seemed perfectly content to listen, propped up on one bare arm, in no hurry to leave the bed or Higgins’ company.
When Higgins pointed this out, Pickering coloured rather charmingly. “Will Mrs Pearce mind very much if we’re late for breakfast? Without Eliza, there’s less call for a strict social routine, and, well, you make me feel young again.”
Higgins couldn’t help preening a little as he reached for his companion, whereupon they were interrupted by the doorbell.
“Who on earth can it be at this hour?” It was Higgins’ turn to scramble out of bed. Could it be Eliza? Or Albert Doolittle? A hurried glance out of his bedroom window revealed that his mother had arrived in a carriage, and was being admitted into No. 27A.
“I might have mentioned over tea my plans to take my leave of Wimpole Street, and clearly she is here to offer you her maternal support,” Pickering confessed, looking somewhat abashed.
Higgins couldn’t help smiling. The Colonel looked as well in his dressing gown as he had looked without it; for the sake of propriety, Higgins donned his own. “Shame about the lie-in, but it looks like we’d better both make it downstairs at a decent time for breakfast after all.”
“Are you certain that’s wise?”
Higgins snorted. “The sooner my mother realises what’s really going on at Wimpole Street, the better! Besides, I find I simply can't be without you.”
Pickering hesitated, and Higgins (who hadn’t quite intended to utter that last sentence) held his breath. It was true, though: he’d learned that last night, when the prospect of losing his loyal friend had set him, for the first time, on this path of self-reflection, and the road to redemption at last.
As previously noted, they shared phonetics, the science of speech and the fount of civilisation; together, they claimed the Universal Alphabet and the Indian Method, as well as a child whom they had jointly launched into society (and by whom Higgins vowed to now do right). And now it appeared they might also share this: a lifetime of consonants and companionship, that he had been on the cusp of throwing away...
Pickering nodded, as if coming to a decision. “Then, perhaps, Henry, you shan't be, after all,” he said, and clasped Higgins by the hand.
