Pygmalion

HIGGINS. Of course they do. Then what in thunder are we quarrelling

about?

LIZA [much troubled] I want a little kindness. I know I'm a common

ignorant girl, and you a book-learned gentleman; but I'm not dirt under

your feet. What I done [correcting herself] what I did was not for the

dresses and the taxis: I did it because we were pleasant together and I

come--came--to care for you; not to want you to make love to me, and

not forgetting the difference between us, but more friendly like.

HIGGINS. Well, of course. That's just how I feel. And how Pickering

feels. Eliza: you're a fool.

LIZA. That's not a proper answer to give me [she sinks on the chair at

the writing-table in tears].

HIGGINS. It's all you'll get until you stop being a common idiot. If

you're going to be a lady, you'll have to give up feeling neglected if

the men you know don't spend half their time snivelling over you and

the other half giving you black eyes. If you can't stand the coldness

of my sort of life, and the strain of it, go back to the gutter. Work

til you are more a brute than a human being; and then cuddle and

squabble and drink til you fall asleep. Oh, it's a fine life, the life

of the gutter. It's real: it's warm: it's violent: you can feel it

through the thickest skin: you can taste it and smell it without any

training or any work. Not like Science and Literature and Classical

Music and Philosophy and Art. You find me cold, unfeeling, selfish,

don't you? Very well: be off with you to the sort of people you like.

Marry some sentimental hog or other with lots of money, and a thick

pair of lips to kiss you with and a thick pair of boots to kick you

with. If you can't appreciate what you've got, you'd better get what

you can appreciate.

LIZA [desperate] Oh, you are a cruel tyrant. I can't talk to you: you

turn everything against me: I'm always in the wrong. But you know very

well all the time 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 know well I couldn't bear to

live with a low common man after you two; and it's wicked and cruel of

you to insult me by pretending I could. You think I must go back to

Wimpole Street because I have nowhere else to go but father's. But

don't you be too sure that you have me under your feet to be trampled

on and talked down. I'll marry Freddy, I will, as soon as he's able to

support me.