Bur. Pray do!
Job. I won't. Reason bid me love my child, and help my friend:—what's the consequence? my friend has run one way, and broke up my trade; my daughter has run another, and broke my——No, she shall never have it to say she broke my heart. If I hang myself for grief, she shan't know she made me.
Bur. Well, but, master—
Job. And reason told me to take you into my shop, when the fat church wardens starved you at the workhouse,—damn their want of feeling for it!—and you were thump'd about, a poor, unoffending, ragged-rump'd boy, as you were—I wonder you hav'n't run away from me too.
Bur. That's the first real unkind word you ever said to me. I've sprinkled your shop two-and-twenty years, and never miss'd a morning.
Job. The bailiffs are below, clearing the goods: you won't have the trouble any longer.
Bur. Trouble! Lookye, old Job Thornberry—
Job. Well! What, you are going to be saucy to me, now I'm ruin'd?
Bur. Don't say one cutting thing after another.—You have been as noted, all round our town, for being a kind man, as being a blunt one.
Job. Blunt or sharp, I've been honest. Let them look at my ledger—they'll find it right. I began upon a little; I made that little great, by industry; I never cringed to a customer, to get him into my books, that I might hamper him with an overcharged bill, for long credit; I earn'd my fair profits; I paid my fair way; I break by the treachery of a friend, and my first dividend will be seventeen shillings in the pound. I wish every tradesman in England may clap his hand on his heart, and say as much, when he asks a creditor to sign his certificate.