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—­the 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 for 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 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 was 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 master-tradesman in the city.