Meaning: This is my best offer, accept it or the deal is off.
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In the 1964 film "My Fairlady," when Eliza, "a prisoner of the gutter," showed
up at Higgins's to take the professor up on his brag, "in six months I could
pass her off as a duchess at an embassy ball..." by teaching her how to speak,
Higgins: How much do you propose to pay me for these lessons?
Eliza: Oh, I know what's right.
My lady friend gets French lessons
for eighteenpence an hour
from a real French gentleman.
You wouldn't have the face
to ask me the same
for teachin' me my own language
as you would for French.
So I won't give more than a shillin'.
Take it or leave it.
The scripts can't do justice to the performance. One really has to see the movie
(I'd bet most already did.) to appreciate it as Harrison and Hepburn acted so
memorably.