turn himself
uneasily in his arm-chair in a natural manner till I have said why
he is uneasy. I cannot bring in my doctor speaking his mind freely
among the bigwigs till I have explained that it is in accordance
with his usual character to do so. This is unartistic on my part,
and shows want of imagination as well as want of skill. Whether or
not I can atone for these faults by straightforward, simple, plain
story-telling--that, indeed, is very doubtful.

Dr Thorne belonged to a family in one sense as good, and at any rate
as old, as that of Mr Gresham; and much older, he was apt to boast,
than that of the de Courcys. This trait in his character is mentioned
first, as it was the weakness for which he was most conspicuous. He
was second cousin to Mr Thorne of Ullathorne, a Barsetshire squire
living in the neighbourhood of Barchester, and who boasted that his
estate had remained in his family, descending from Thorne to Thorne,
longer than had been the case with any other estate or any other
family in the county.

But Dr Thorne was only a second cousin; and, therefore, though he was
entitled to talk of the blood as belonging to some extent to himself,
he had no right to lay claim to any position in the county other than
such as he might win for himself if he chose to locate himself in it.
This was a fact of which no one was more fully aware than our doctor
himself. His father, who had been first cousin of a former Squire
Thorne, had been a clerical dignitary in Barchester, but had been
dead now many years. He had had two sons; one he had educated as a
medical man, but the other, and the younger, whom he had intended
for the Bar, had not betaken himself in any satisfactory way to any
calling. This son had been first rusticated from Oxford, and then
expelled; and thence returning to Barchester, had been the cause to
his father and brother of much suffering.

Old Dr Thorne, the clergyman, died when the two brothers were yet
young men, and left behind him nothing but some household and
other property of the value of about two thousand pounds, which he
bequeathed to Thomas, the elder son, much more than that having been
spent in liquidating debts contracted by the younger. Up to that time
there had been close harmony between the Ullathorne family and that
of the clergyman; but a month or two before the doctor's death--the
period of which we are speaking was about two-and-twenty years before
the commencement of our story--t