Susanna Wesley

136 SUSANNA WESLEY.
even expected to die, while she herself did her
best to
keep the large family on a very small sum of money.
Kezia and Martha, and, in fact, all the girls, told the
same tale of the scantiness of money and clothes, and
how their mother's ill-health was to a great extent
caused by want of common comforts. Mary, the
deformed girl,
appears to have been almost the family
drudge and the
;
others, who would fain have gone out
as governesses or companions, or, in fact, in any
capacity, were unable to do so for want of clothes in
which to make a decent appearance. The only chance
they saw of bettering their circumstances was marriage,
and to that most of their thoughts seem to
have been directed. One or two of them loved very
deeply and truly, but bestowed their affections on men
who were not worthy of them, and ultimately made
marriages in which there was little or no prospect of
happiness. Many suitors appeared for one or the
other of them, but were refused by the parents,
perhaps not always on sufficient grounds, for, taken
altogether, the matrimonial affairs of the daughters
were eminently unhappy. Hetty, who was a pretty,
clever, sprightly girl, went wrong altogether, and
was treated by both her parents with the harshness
of rigid virtue that has never known temptation.
They utterly refused to see or forgive her; and
had not her brothers and uncle pitied and made
allowances for her, her fate would have been even
worse than it was. Samuel probably interceded and
reconciled them during his visit home in 1725. She
still had some lingering hope of being married to the
man who had beguiled her and whom she truly loved ;
but her father and mother looked on this as the climax
of everything undesirable, and absolutely commanded