new her father's
beliefs to be as strong and deep as they were temperately expressed.

So it happened that Samuel Wesley, halting awkwardly (as a
hobbledehoy will) before this slip of a girl and stammering some
words meant to comfort her for losing her sister, presently found
himself answering strange questions, staring into young eyes which
had somehow surprised his own doubts of Dissent, and beyond them into
a mind which had come to its own decision and quietly, firmly,
invited him to follow. It startled him so that love dawned at the
same moment with a lesser shock. He seated himself on the window
cushion beside her, and after this they talked a very little, but
watched the guests, feeling like two conspirators in the crowd,
feeling also that the world was suddenly changed for them both.

And thus it came about that Samuel Wesley dropped his pen, packed his
books, and tramped off to Oxford. He was back again now, after five
years, with his degree, but no money as yet to marry on. He started
with a curacy at 28 pounds a year; was appointed chaplain on board a
man-of-war, when his income rose to 70 pounds; and began an epic poem
on the Life of Christ, scribbling (since he had leisure) at the rate
of two hundred couplets a day; but soon returned to London, where he
obtained a second curacy and 30 pounds year. His pen earned him
another 30 pounds, and on this he decided to marry.

Between him and Susanna Annesley there had been little talk of love,
but no doubt at all. She was now close upon twenty, and ready to
marry him when he named the day. So married they were, in 1689.
Less than a year later their first child, Samuel, was born in their
London lodgings, and soon after came an offer, from the Massingberd
family, through the Marquis of Normanby, of the living of South
Ormsby in Lincolnshire. Thither accordingly they journeyed on
Midsummer Day, 1690, and there resided until the spring of 1697 in a
vicarage little better than a mud-built hut. There Mrs. Wesley bare
Emilia, Susannah and Molly, besides other children who died in
infancy, and there the Rector put forth his _Life of our Blessed Lord
and Saviour Jesus Christ. A heroic poem in ten books_: besides such
trifles as "The Young Student's Library: containing Extracts and
Abridgments of the most Valuable Books printed in England and in the
Foreign Journals from the year '65 to this time. To which is added
A New Essay upon all sorts of Learning."

Clo