ng off your hat and opening
doors--

PICKERING. Oh, that was nothing.

LIZA. Yes: things that showed you thought and felt about me as if I
were something better than a scullerymaid; though of course I know you
would have been just the same to a scullery-maid if she had been let in
the drawing-room. You never took off your boots in the dining room when
I was there.

PICKERING. You mustn't mind that. Higgins takes off his boots all over
the place.

LIZA. I know. I am not blaming him. It is his way, isn't it? But it
made such a difference to me that you didn't do it. You see, really and
truly, apart from the things anyone can pick up (the dressing and the
proper way of speaking, and so on), the difference between a lady and a
flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she's treated. I shall
always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats
me as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to
you, because you always treat me as a lady, and always will.

MRS. HIGGINS. Please don't grind your teeth, Henry.

PICKERING. Well, this is really very nice of you, Miss Doolittle.

LIZA. I should like you to call me Eliza, now, if you would.

PICKERING. Thank you. Eliza, of course.

LIZA. And I should like Professor Higgins to call me Miss Doolittle.

HIGGINS. I'll see you damned first.

MRS. HIGGINS. Henry! Henry!

PICKERING [laughing] Why don't you slang back at him? Don't stand it.
It would do him a lot of good.

LIZA. I can't. I could have done it once; but now I can't go back to
it. Last night, when I was wandering about, a girl spoke to me; and I
tried to get back into the old way with her; but it was no use. You
told me, you know, that when a child is brought to a foreign country,
it picks up the language in a few weeks, and forgets its own. Well, I
am a child in your country. I have forgotten my own language, and can
speak nothing but yours. That's the real break-off with the corner of
Tottenham Court Road. Leaving Wimpole Street finishes it.

PICKERING [much alarmed] Oh! but you're coming back to Wimpole Street,
aren't you? You'll forgive Higgins?

HIGGINS [rising] Forgive! Will she, by George! Let her go. Let her find
out how she can get on without us. She will relapse into the gutter in
three weeks without me at her elbow.

Doolittle appears at the centre window. With a look of dignified
reproach at Higgins, he comes slowly and silently to his daughter, who,
with her