Page:Susanna Wesley (Clarke 1886).djvu/151

This page needs to be proofread.
DISAPPOINTMENTS AND PERPLEXITIES.
139

perhaps sooner if I am quite tired out, I have fully fixed on a state of life--a way indeed that my parents may disapprove, but that I do not regard. Bread must be had, and I won't starve to please any or all the friends I have in the world."

It must have been about the time of the removal to Wroote that Mrs. Wesley heard that her brother was coming home in one of the East India Company's ships as before mentioned, and undertook the. journey to London in order to meet him. Her son John was by that time at Oxford, having obtained a Charterhouse scholarship worth forty pounds a year, which, however, did not cover his expenses. Samuel, who was just then laid up with a broken leg, and knew how glad his mother would be to see her second son, asked him to come up to Westminster. This letter gave the youth so much pleasure that he wept for joy, for he had longed exceedingly to see his mother again, as well as to go to Westminster. But as money was scarce, and he was already in debt, he was unable to leave Oxford; and, as soon as Mrs. Wesley got home, she wrote him an anxious yet hopeful little note:--

"DEAR JACK, " Wroote, August 19th, 1724. "I am uneasy because I have not heard from you. I don't think you do well to stand upon points, and to write only letter for letter. Let me hear from you often, and inform me of the state of your health, and whether you have any reasonable hopes of being out of debt. I am most concerned for the good, generous man that lent you ten pounds, and am ashamed to beg a mouth or two longer, since he has been so kind as to grant us so much time already. We were amused with your uncle's coming from India;