He would therefore be obliged if I would give it to him as the place he was at in Yorkshire did not suit his wife's health.
Here I may state that afterwards I learned that what did not suit Mrs.
Bastin was the organist, who was pretty.

She was by nature a woman with a temperament so insanely jealous that actually she managed to be suspicious of Bastin, whom she had captured in an unguarded moment when he was thinking of something else and who would as soon have thought of even looking at any woman as he would of worshipping Baal.

As a matter of fact it took him months to know one female from another.

Except as possible providers of subscriptions and props of Mothers' Meetings, women had no interest for him.
To return--with that engaging honesty which I have mentioned--Bastin's letter went on to set out all his own disabilities, which, he added, would probably render him unsuitable for the place he desired to fill.
He was a High Churchman, a fact which would certainly offend many; he had no claims to being a preacher although he was extraordinarily well acquainted with the writings of the Early Fathers.

(What on earth had that to do with the question, I wondered.) On the other hand he had generally been considered a good visitor and was fond of walking (he meant to call on distant parishioners, but did not say so).
Then followed a page and a half on the evils of the existing system of the presentation to livings by private persons, ending with the suggestion that I had probably committed a sin in buying this particular advowson in order to increase my local authority, that is, if I had bought it, a point on which he was ignorant.