r.... And what was that line?

Mr. Parham-Carter leaned on the gate a full five minutes considering all
this. But he arrived at no conclusion.

CHAPTER II

(I)

The Rector of Merefield was returning from a short pastoral visitation
towards the close of an afternoon at the beginning of November. His
method and aims were very characteristic of himself, since he was one of
that numerous class of persons who, interiorly possessing their full
share of proper pride, wear exteriorly an appearance of extreme and
almost timid humility. The aims of his visiting were, though he was
quite unaware of the fact, directed towards encouraging people to hold
fast to their proper position in life (for this, after all, is only
another name for one's duty towards one's neighbor), and his method was
to engage in general conversation on local topics. There emerged, in
this way, information as to the patient's habits and actions; it would
thus transpire, for example, whether the patient had been to church or
not, whether there were any quarrels, and, if so, who were the
combatants and for what cause.

He had been fairly satisfied to-day; he had met with good excuses for
the absence of two children from day-school, and of a young man from
choir-practice; he had read a little Scripture to an old man, and had
been edified by his comments upon it. It was not particularly
supernatural, but, after all, the natural has its place, too, in life,
and he had undoubtedly fulfilled to-day some of the duties for whose
sake he occupied the position of Rector of Merefield, in a completely
inoffensive manner. The things he hated most in the world were
disturbances of any kind, abruptness and the unexpected, and he had a
strong reputation in the village for being a man of peace.

It sounds a hard thing to say of so conscientious a man, but a properly
preserved social order was perhaps to his mind the nearest approach to
the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Each person held
his proper position, including himself, and he no more expected others
to be untrue to their station than he wished to be untrue to his own.
There were, of course, two main divisions--those of gentle birth and
those not of gentle birth, and these were as distinct as the sexes. But
there were endless gradations in each respectively, and he himself
regarded those with as much respect as those of the angelic hierarchy:
the "Dominations" might, or might not be as "g