he then Mr Thorne of Ullathorne had
made it understood that he would no longer receive at his house his
cousin Henry, whom he regarded as a disgrace to the family.

Fathers are apt to be more lenient to their sons than uncles to their
nephews, or cousins to each other. Dr Thorne still hoped to reclaim
his black sheep, and thought that the head of his family showed an
unnecessary harshness in putting an obstacle in his way of doing so.
And if the father was warm in support of his profligate son, the
young medical aspirant was warmer in support of his profligate
brother. Dr Thorne, junior, was no roue himself, but perhaps, as a
young man, he had not sufficient abhorrence of his brother's vices.
At any rate, he stuck to him manfully; and when it was signified
in the Close that Henry's company was not considered desirable at
Ullathorne, Dr Thomas Thorne sent word to the squire that under such
circumstances his visits there would also cease.

This was not very prudent, as the young Galen had elected to
establish himself in Barchester, very mainly in expectation of the
help which his Ullathorne connexion would give him. This, however, in
his anger he failed to consider; he was never known, either in early
or in middle life, to consider in his anger those points which were
probably best worth his consideration. This, perhaps, was of the less
moment as his anger was of an unenduring kind, evaporating frequently
with more celerity than he could get the angry words out of his
mouth. With the Ullathorne people, however, he did establish a
quarrel sufficiently permanent to be of vital injury to his medical
prospects.

And then the father died, and the two brothers were left living
together with very little means between them. At this time there
were living, in Barchester, people of the name of Scatcherd. Of that
family, as then existing, we have only to do with two, a brother and
a sister. They were in a low rank of life, the one being a journeyman
stone-mason, and the other an apprentice to a straw-bonnet maker; but
they were, nevertheless, in some sort remarkable people. The sister
was reputed in Barchester to be a model of female beauty of the
strong and robuster cast, and had also a better reputation as being
a girl of good character and honest, womanly conduct. Both of her
beauty and of her reputation her brother was exceedingly proud, and
he was the more so when he learnt that she had been asked in marriage
by a decent ma