Job. [Starting.] What! died! without forgiving his child!—Come, that's too much. I cou'dn't have done that, neither.—But, go on: I hope you've been prosperous. But you shou'dn't—you shou'dn't have quitted your father.
Pereg. I acknowledge it;—yet, I have seen prosperity; though I traversed many countries, on my outset, in pain and poverty. Chance, at length, raised me a friend in India; by whose interest, and my own industry, I amass'd considerable wealth, in the 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.