Higgins.  I care for life, for humanity; and you are a part of it that has come my way and been built into my house.  What more can you or anyone ask?

Liza.  I won’t care for anybody that doesn’t care for me.

Higgins.  Commercial principles, Eliza.  Like [reproducing her Covent Garden pronunciation with professional exactness] s’yollin voylets [selling violets], isn’t it?

Liza.  Don’t sneer at me.  It’s mean to sneer at me.

Higgins.  I have never sneered in my life.  Sneering doesn’t become either the human face or the human soul.  I am expressing my righteous contempt for Commercialism.  I don’t and won’t trade in affection.  You call me a brute because you couldn’t buy a claim on me by fetching my slippers and finding my spectacles.  You were a fool:  I think a woman fetching a man’s slippers is a disgusting sight:  did I ever fetch your slippers?  I think a good deal more of you for throwing them in my face.  No use slaving for me and then saying you want to be cared for:  who cares for a slave?  If you come back, come back for the sake of good fellowship; for you’ll get nothing else.  You’ve had a thousand times as much out of me as I have out of you; and if you dare to set up your little dog’s tricks of fetching and carrying slippers against my creation of a Duchess Eliza, I’ll slam the door in your silly face.

Liza.  What did you do it for if you didn’t care for me?

Higgins [heartily] Why, because it was my job.

Liza.  You never thought of the trouble it would make for me.

Higgins.  Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been afraid of making trouble?  Making life means making trouble.  There’s only one way of escaping trouble; and that’s killing things.  Cowards, you notice, are always shrieking to have troublesome people killed.

Liza.  I’m no preacher:  I don’t notice things like that.  I notice that you don’t notice me.

Higgins [jumping up and walking about intolerantly] Eliza:  you’re an idiot.  I waste the treasures of my Miltonic mind by spreading them before you.  Once for all, understand that I go my way and do my work without caring twopence what happens to either of us.  I am not intimidated, like your father and your stepmother.  So you can come back or go to the devil:  which you please.

Liza.  What am I to come back for?

Higgins [bouncing up on his knees on the ottoman and leaning over it to her] For the fun of it.  That’s why I took you on.

Liza [with averted face] And you may throw me out tomorrow if I don’t do everything you want me to?

Higgins.  Yes; and you may walk out tomorrow if I don’t do everything you want me to.

Liza.  And live with my stepmother?

Higgins.  Yes, or sell flowers.