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Updated: June 9, 2025
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.
Blandford appeared rather flattered than otherwise by this observation, and told Mr Pillans to shut up and not tell tales out of school. "I suppose Wilderham hasn't changed much since last term?" asked Reginald wistfully. "Oh no; plenty of fellows left and new ones come rather a better lot, take them all round, than we had last term."
There was some excuse certainly for not taking in his old schoolfellow's identity all at once, for the boy he had known at Wilderham only a few months ago had suddenly blossomed forth into a man, and had exchanged the airy bearing of a school-boy for the half-languid swagger of a man about town.
Wilderham was not exactly an aristocratic school, but it was a school where money was thought less of than "good style," as the boys called it, and where poverty was far less of a disgrace than even a remote connection with a "shop."
The boy shuffled to the door and up another flight of stairs, at the head of which he opened the door of a very small room, about the size of one of the Wilderham studies, with just room to squeeze round a low iron bedstead without scraping the wall. "There you are clean and haired and no error. I've slep' in it myself."
"Now, dear boys," said Mrs Cruden, when the meal was over, and they drew their chairs to the open window, "I'm longing to hear your day's adventures. How did you get on? Was it as bad as you expected?" "It wasn't particularly jolly," said Reginald, shrugging his shoulders "nothing like Wilderham, was it, Horrors?" "Well, it was a different sort of fun, certainly," said Horace.
The Wilderham fellows would read it, and set him down as one more who had gone to the bad. Young Gedge would read it, and scorn him for a hypocrite and a humbug. Durfy would read it, and chuckle. His mother and Horace would read it. Yes, and what would they think? Nothing he could say would convince them or anybody. They might forgive him, but The thought made his blood boil within him.
Harker, who had shared the distinction of being tossed with Horace in the same blanket every night for the first week of his sojourn at Wilderham, had not forgotten the fact, and ejaculated, "Rather!" "The mischief is," continued Blandford, "they get such a shady lot of fellows there now. The school's not half as respectable as it was there are far too many shopkeepers' sons and that sort of "
"I don't think you will," said Reginald, coolly dropping the broom and facing his enemy. He was happier at that moment than he had been for a long time. He could imagine himself back at Wilderham, with the school bully shouting at him, and his spirits rose within him accordingly. "What do you say? you hugger-mugger puppy you you "
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.
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