Factory at
Calcutta.

_Job._ And have just landed it, I suppose, in England.

_Pereg._ I landed one hundred pounds, last night, in my purse, as I
swam from the Indiaman, which was splitting on a rock, half a league
from the neighbouring shore. As for the rest of my property--bills,
bonds, cash, jewels--the whole amount of my toil and application,
are, by this time, I doubt not, gone to the bottom; and Peregrine is
returned, after thirty years, to pay his debt to you, almost as poor
as he left you.

_Job._ I won't touch a penny of your hundred pounds--not a penny.

_Pereg._ I do not desire you: I only desire you to take your own.

_Job._ My own?

_Pereg._ Yes; I plunged with this box, last night, into the waves.
You see, it has your name on it.

_Job._ "Job Thornberry," sure enough. And what's in it?

_Pereg._ The harvest of a kind man's charity!--the produce of your
bounty to one, whom you thought an orphan. I have traded, these
twenty years, on ten guineas (which, from the first, I had set apart
as yours), till they have become ten thousand: take it; it could
not, I find, come more opportunely. Your honest heart gratified
itself in administering to my need; and I experience that burst of
pleasure, a grateful man enjoys, in relieving my reliever.
[_Giving him the Box._

_Job._ [_Squeezes PEREGRINE'S Hand, returns the Box, and seems
almost unable to utter._] Take it again.

_Pereg._ Why do you reject it?

_Job._ I'll tell you, as soon as I'm able. T'other day, I lent a
friend----Pshaw, rot it! I'm an old fool! [_Wiping his Eyes._]--I
lent a friend, t'other day, the whole profits of my trade, to save
him from sinking. He walk'd off with them, and made me a bankrupt.
Don't you think he is a rascal?

_Pereg._ Decidedly so.

_Job._ And what should I be, if I took all you have saved in the
world, and left you to shift for yourself?

_Pereg._ But the case is different. This money is, in fact, your
own. I am inur'd to hardships; better able to bear them, and am
younger than you. Perhaps, too, I still have prospects of----

_Job._ I won't take it. I'm as thankful to you, as if I left you to
starve: but I won't take it.

_Pereg._ Remember, too, you have claims upon you, which I have not.
My guide, as I came hither, said, you had married in my absence:
'tis true, he told me you were now a widower; but, it seems, you
have a daughter to provide for.

_Job._ I hav