
as he passes a lamp. This so intensifies his dudgeon, that for five minutes he
is in an ill-humour. But he whistles that off, like the rest of it; and marches
home to the Shooting Gallery.
 

                                 Chapter XXVIII

                                 The Ironmaster

Sir Leicester Dedlock has got the better, for the time being, of the family
gout; and is once more, in a literal no less than in a figurative point of view,
upon his legs. He is at his place in Lincolnshire; but the waters are out again
on the low-lying grounds, and the cold and damp steal into Chesney Wold, though
well defended, and eke into Sir Leicester's bones. The blazing fires of faggot
and coal - Dedlock timber and antediluvian forest - that blaze upon the broad
wide hearths, and wink in the twilight on the frowning woods, sullen to see how
trees are sacrificed, do not exclude the enemy. The hot-water pipes that trail
themselves all over the house, the cushioned doors and windows, and the screens
and curtains, fail to supply the fires' deficiencies, and to satisfy Sir
Leicester's need. Hence the fashionable intelligence proclaims one morning to
the listening earth, that Lady Dedlock is expected shortly to return to town for
a few weeks.
    It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.
Indeed great men have often more than their fair share of poor relations;
inasmuch as very red blood of the superior quality, like inferior blood
unlawfully shed, will cry aloud, and will be heard. Sir Leicester's cousins, in
the remotest degree, are so many Murders, in the respect that they will out.
Among whom there are cousins who are so poor, that one might almost dare to
think it would have been the happier for them never to have been plated links
upon the Dedlock chain of gold, but to have been made of common iron at first,
and done base service.
    Service, however (with a few limited reservations; genteel but not
profitable), they may not do, being of the Dedlock dignity. So they visit their
richer cousins, and get into debt when they can, and live but shabbily when they
can't, and find - the women no husbands, and the men no wives - and ride in
borrowed carriages, and sit at feasts that are never of their own making, and so
go through high life. The rich family sum has been divided by so many figures,
and they are the something over that nobody knows what to do with.
    Everybody on Sir Leicester Dedlock
