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To return to my school-days. Shortly after I left the school in George Street, where the schoolmaster had almost split my skull in battering it upon the wall behind me, I was entered as a pupil at the Edinburgh High School, in October 1817. The school was situated near the old Infirmary. Professor Pillans was the rector, and under him were four masters. I was set to study Latin under Mr. Irvine.
Besides professional friends in nearly all quarters of the world, he could number among his intimate associates Brougham, Horner, Jeffrey, Pillans, Thomas Thomson, and John Allen, afterwards private secretary and confidential friend of the late Lord Holland friendships which, no doubt, account readily for the appearance of certain of the productions of his unresting pen on medical topics in the earlier numbers of the Edinburgh Review.
With Reginald to supply them with honesty, with easy-going spendthrifts, like Blandford and Pillans, to supply them with money, and with a cad like Durfy to do their dirty work for them, they were in as comfortable and hopeful a way as the promoters of such an enterprise could reasonably hope to be. The trio at the Shades soon forgot Reginald in the delights of one another's sweet society.
Never mind; they say dress after seven o'clock here, but they're not strict. We can smuggle you in." Oh, how Reginald wished he was safe back in Dull Street! "By the way," continued Blandford, "these are two friends of mine, Cruden Mr Shanklin and Mr Pillans. Cruden's an old Wilderham fellow, you know," he added, in an explanatory aside.
We've been to the theatre, haven't we, Pillans?" said Blandford, who appeared already to be rather the worse for drink. "I have. You've been in the bar most of the time," said Pillans. "Ha! ha! I was told Bland was studying for the Bar. I do like application," said Mr Medlock.
John Donaldson, W.S., of whose house, 124 Princes Street, he became an inmate. "What I want," said Mr. Donaldson to the professor, "is a gentleman." "Well," replied Pillans, "I am sending you first-rate raw material; we shall see what you will make of it."
"Thanks, very much," said that gentleman, putting them in his pocket. "I find I've left your bill at home, but I'll send it round to you in the morning." "Oh, all serene!" said Blandford, putting his pocketbook back into his pocket. "Have another bottle of cham do just to celebrate settling old scores. Hullo, where are you, Pillans?"
Should he ever forget the last cricket match of the summer term, when he bowled three men in one over, and made the hardest catch on record in the Wilderham Close? He and Blandford Ah, Blandford! His mind swerved on the points here, and branched off into the recollection of that ill-starred dinner at the Shades, and the unhealthy bloated face of the cad Pillans.
"Do you want me to try?" shouted Mr Pillans. "Not unless you like," replied Horace, putting the money down on the table and holding out his hand to Blandford. The latter took it mechanically, too glad to see his visitor departing to offer any obstacle. "I'll look you up again some day," said Horace, "when your bulldog here is chained up.
"It's a pity you had to leave Garden Vale," said Blandford, apparently anxious to turn the conversation into a more pacific channel; "such a jolly place it was. What do you do with yourself all day long in town?" Reginald smiled. "I work for my living," said he, keeping his eye steadily fixed on Mr Pillans, as if waiting to catch the first sign of an insult on his part.
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