_Shuff._ [_Glancing over it._] A pretty, little, crowquill kind of a hand.--_"Happiness,--innocence,--trifling assistance--gentleman befriended me--unhappy Mary."_--Yes, I see--[_Returning it._]--She wants money, but has got a new friend.--The style's neat, but the subject isn't original. _Frank._ Will you serve me at this crisis? _Shuff._ Certainly. _Frank._ I wish you to see my poor Mary in the course of the day. Will you talk to her? _Shuff._ O yes--I'll talk to her. Where is she to be seen? _Frank._ She writes, you see, that she has abruptly left her father--and I learn, by the messenger, that she is now in a miserable, retired house, on the neighbouring heath.--That mustn't deter you from going. _Shuff._ Me? Oh, dear no--I'm used to it. I don't care how retired the house is. _Frank._ Come down to my father to breakfast. I will tell you afterwards all I wish you to execute.--Oh, Tom! this business has unhinged me for society. Rigid morality, after all, is the best coat of mail for the conscience. _Shuff._ Our ancestors, who wore mail, admired it amazingly; but to mix in the gay world, with their rigid morality, would be as singular as stalking into a drawing-room in their armour:--for dissipation is now the fashionable habit, with which, like a brown coat, a man goes into company, to avoid being stared at. [_Exeunt._ SCENE III. _An Apartment in JOB THORNBERRY'S House._ _Enter JOB THORNBERRY, in a Night Gown, and BUR._ _Bur._ Don't take on so--don't you, now! pray, listen to reason. _Job._ I won't. _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.