The Rector is not so much a bad priest - just bad at being one His sour and critically unforgiving nature alienates every man, woman and child in the parish while his only daughter is driven by overwork and the advances of the local Romeo into loss of memory and, ulitimately, of faith Her wanderings take her into the hopfields of Kent and into the lower reaches of private education while the author uses her sufferings to portray the iniquities of both