She was but a child, and just then an unhappy one, though with no childish trouble.  Minds ripened early in Annesley House, where scholars and divines resorted to discuss the battle raging between Church and Dissent.  Susanna Annesley had listened and brooded upon what she heard; and now her convictions troubled her, for she saw, or thought she saw, the Church to be in the right, and herself an alien in her father’s house, secretly rebellious against those she loved and preparing to disappoint them cruelly.  She knew 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.”