observances was not mine, or, I imagine, that of anybody else.
But I will not attempt to set it out.

His peculiarities, however, were easy to excuse and entirely
swallowed up by the innate goodness of his nature which soon made
him beloved of everyone in the place, for although he thought
that probably most things were sins, I never knew him to discover
a sin which he considered to be beyond the reach of forgiveness.
Bastin was indeed a most charitable man and in his way
wide-minded.

The person whom I could not tolerate, however, was his wife,
who, to my fancy, more resembled a vessel, a very unattractive
vessel, full of vinegar than a woman. Her name was Sarah and she
was small, plain, flat, sandy-haired and odious, quite obsessed,
moreover, with her jealousies of the Rev. Basil, at whom it
pleased her to suppose that every woman in the countryside under
fifty was throwing herself.

Here I will confess that to the best of my ability I took care
that they did in outward seeming, that is, whenever she was
present, instructing them to sit aside with him in darkened
corners, to present him with flowers, and so forth. Several of
them easily fell into the humour of the thing, and I have seen
him depart from a dinner-party followed by that glowering Sarah,
with a handful of rosebuds and violets, to say nothing of the
traditional offerings of slippers, embroidered markers and the
like. Well, it was my only way of coming even with her, which I
think she knew, for she hated me poisonously.