Posted October 13, 2021

Mother wasn't really getting any better. She had thrown herself into the regulation two year period of mourning for her dead husband with gusto, and in reverse proportion to the care he had ever shown toward her when he was alive. Anæsthesia found the atmosphere at home stifling, and she found her mother's hysterical sobbing and wailing and her manic attempts to contact the late Richard Orr through her Spiritualist group wearing on her nerves. At last, after many delaying tactics by Mrs Orr, the daughter of the stricken family had been allowed to 'slight the mourning', to lay aside the crape and the veils and adopt a slightly less stiff and frigid form of dress (dark grey and mauve were allowed now, as well as black) and to leave the house: to finally live again.

She prayed that the time that had elapsed had not dulled Addy Chappel's desire to learn to read and write; for it had only increased Anæsthesia's ardour to teach her. Still, excited as she was as she approached the door of the neat little house where the female wagoneer lived, she could not quite quell her nerves. Miss Chappel was older than herself, a grown woman with a fiancé and even an adopted son. Who was she? A mere slip of a girl, only a couple of years out of school: closeted and cozened by her over-indulgent parents and knowing little of the real world other than that which she had read in the pages of magazines like The Young Lady, The Woman's Journal and that awful rogue copy of The Truth Seeker that had been delivered by accident. How silly and girlish she must look with her juvenile features and her blonde locks curled beneath her sombre bonnet as she hurried along, gripping hold of the materials she had produced for their first lesson, clutching them in her tastefully gloved hands like a drowning man might grasp desperately to a lifebelt.

She closed her eyes, frogs leaping around in her belly, or so it felt, took a deep breath, and knocked upon the door.

"Come in, please." Setting aside the rag she was using, Addy stood, wiping her hands on her britches, then heading for the door to greet her guest.

Anæsthesia heard the summons and gingerly popped her head inside the door. She tried to hide her shock that Addy was dressed in her male, workaday attire and was clearly in the middle of some task involving pieces of long leather, some sort of horse harness, perhaps. She had rather imagined them both sitting down like two ladies at high tea, in elegant dresses, as they genteelly discussed the niceties of the English tongue. She steeled herself to the fact that today was going to be a steep learning curve for both of them (good girl) and walked in.

"I am Anæsthesia Orr" she said, holding out her hand "I do not believe that we have ever been properly introduced." It was ridiculous, of course, they both knew who the other was, but Anæsthesia knew from the March 1875 issue (pp.5-6) of The Young Lady that social intercourse set without the proper conventions of polite behaviour could lead to terrible chaos and confusion.

"I do hope that I have arrived at the correct time" she added, pulling at a thin chain that led from a front button of her dress to a small watch tucked into a tiny pocket on her dress, created for that very purpose. But that was so much theatre, Anæsthesia knew she was here at the right time on the right day: her heart sank a little, perhaps Miss Chappel wasn't intending to take these lessons seriously.

Anæsthesia entered the house and looked about: it was certainly clean, if not too neat, and she was pleasantly surprised on seeing "how the other half lived", especially when they entered the kitchen, which Addy had clearly made an effort to tidy up and make a suitable space at their table for them to have their lesson.

"Yeah, yeah, yer right punctual. Sorry 'bout th' mess, I was just tryin' ta make th' best of time. C'mon in here." Stepping over the harness, she led the way to the kitchen, then nodded to the table. "Have a seat there while I wash up."

The rich girl nodded and looked at the choice of seating furniture, not so much Shaker as shaky, but she understood that Miss Chappel's fiancé was some sort of handyman, and so presumably had made the chairs quite safe: at least for dainty posteriors.

"Help yerself ta water an' them cakes..." she offered as she washed her hands in the sink, "I didn't make them cakes, they come from th' Lickskillet, so they're safe!"

It took a few seconds for Anæsthesia to realise that Addy was making a joke, and so her forced smile came a little to late to be effective. She was not completely without a sense of humor, but had never been particularly quick on the uptake when it came to repartee: people often had to explain jokes to her and why they were amusing, which usually killed the thing dead.

As Addy joined her she lifted the slate and examined it. She did not intend to shilly-shally, she intended to jump right in.

"We have a friend here" she said, pointing to the letter D. "Letters that do not change their sound, where-ever they may roam, will be our best friends on our journey Miss Chappel." she declared.

"Duh." she pronounced, pointing at the D and reached for the cloth "I hope you will not mind me destroying your handiwork, Miss Chappel, but I believe that we should commence with lower... little letters, and learn their sounds and not their names. No not think that I am treating you as a baby, if I prefer, instead of A.D.D.Y.,..." she wiped the slate clean and wrote addy in a beautifully clear printed hand on the slate in chalk.

"... a duh duh yuh" she enunciated. "duh is always duh" she repeated, as she expanded the word to spell daddy "so if I add 'duh' to the beginning of addy, it makes...?" she turned her eyes hopefully toward the older woman.

"Well, ya put th' 'duh' in front'a my name, so it'd be...duh-aa-duh-duh-eee?" Her mouth twisted up as she looked at the girl. "Well, that don't make no sense. Now, if'n ya took 'addy' an' put that there letter...it'd be...daddy?" Her eyes brightened as she grinned. "Is it 'daddy'?"

"Yes, YES! Daddy!" yelped Anæsthesia excitedly, before she pulled herself together and continued with the decorum befitting a teacher. "Ahem. That was very good Miss Chappel. You rightly point out that the 'Yuh' changes its sound to "eee" in your name. It is one of the naughtiest set of letters in the alphabet for inconstancy. The vowels. 'a' 'eh' 'ih' 'o' uh'" she enunciated the usual sound of each "We will ignore those naughty letters for now, and concentrate on our good and constant friends. For instance 'Buh'."

She wiped of the initial D from the slate "daddy, addy..." she wrote in a lower case 'b' at the beginning of 'addy' and looked enquiringly at her pupil. 'Buh'.

"Baddy? That's right, ain't it?"

"Oh Miss Chappel, it is, it is!" Anæsthesia had had little to be happy about lately, but Addy's correct answers were producing smiles on the young lady's face that were as genuine and spontaneous as they were beautiful. She had not come unprepared, however, and had thought long and hard about the difficulties and inconsistencies around the English language when you really sat down and thought about how to teach someone to read and write it.

"But ain't th' letter there at th' end," she pointed to the 'y', "what makes that 'eeee' sound? So, that's 'E'?" Somehow, she thought 'E' looked different, without the tail. But maybe that was what made a letter bad? It looked like one letter but sounded like another?

The young teacher shook her head sadly, as if she were beholding the sight of a once good young man who, tempted by the ways of sin, had strayed from the path, and was now on his march to the gallows.

"I am afraid, Miss Chappel, that poor "Yuh" is one of the naughtier letters. He started off faithful and true, and at the beginning of a word always sounds "Yuh" - but in the middle he often turns into a "iy", as in 'trying, and then by the end, goes totally to pieces, sometimes an 'eee' as in Addy, sometimes a "Yuh" again, as n Pay."

"Like th' Apach' sittin' in th' rocks, plain as day, only just ya can't tell 'em out from th' rest 'cause he looks just like th' rocks?"

It took Anæsthesia a second to get her drift, but then she nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, these naughty vowels camouflage themselves just like the Indians! Whereas our friends "buh" "duh" and "kicking kuh" always stand up brave and true, in full view, just like our brave soldiers in blue!"

She did frown a little at the analogy though. "However, although they are rather naughty, 'a' 'eee' 'i' and 'o' and 'yuh' do at least have their uses, unlike the useless red man and his squaw, and our language would be so much less poetical and interesting without them." she pontificated.

And so the lesson went on, Anæsthesia varying the pace using little cards on which she had written different letters, and practicing writing some of the words they explored on the slate until, in what seemed like an instant, the little chime on her watch sounded: for it was a very clever watch: and she pulled it out with a little cry of "Oh, is that an hour already? Goodness!"

Still, she felt satisfied with what they had achieved in 60 tiny minutes and had to admit to herself, she had probably learned a lot more about teaching in the last hour than Miss Chappel had learned about reading and writing.