Page:Susanna Wesley (Clarke 1886).djvu/30

18 his mother was distressed to observe that, though healthy and extremely intelligent, he showed no sign of talking. This made her very anxious, and the care of a child who she feared was dumb, as well as the very natural tenderness for a first-born son, caused " Sammy," as they called him, to be her favourite, a predilection which she, as well as others, fully recognised. In 1691 a little girl was born, and named after her mother, and in January of the following year Emilia made her appearance. In April 1693 the infant Susanna died, making the first break in the circle. In 1694 twin boys, Annesley and Jedediah, were born, but died in infancy, and a few months after their death came another girl, who was also named Susanna, and lived to a ripe old age. Mary, the last born at South Ormsby, through a fall became deformed and sickly ; so that it is evident that Mrs. Wesley's hands were always full and her strength sorely tried.

It might have been imagined that in this remote village no social difficulties were likely to arise; but it was not so. The Marquis of Normanby, like many others of his time, was a man of sadly loose morals, and kept a "lady" at a house in South Ormsby. She took a great fancy to the Rector's pretty wife, and would fain have been very intimate with her. Mrs. Wesley, secure in her own position as a happy wife and mother, does not seem to have harshly discouraged her fallen sister ; but her hot-tempered and high-handed husband was not going to endure it, and, it is averred, coming in one day when the peccant woman was sitting with his wife, he handed her out of the house in a sufficiently peremptory manner. John Wesley says that this conduct gave such offence to the