“It is puzzling, certainly,” I said.
“Puzzling? Puzzling ain’t nothing to it. I can write a fair round hand, and spell fast enough my way. Our sergeant says there isn’t a man on our station as can write such a nice looking report; but when it comes to the spelling—there, I won’t tell you what he said about that!”
“But you could soon improve your spelling.”
“Think so?” he said eagerly. “Oh no, I don’t fancy we could.”
“I am sure you could,” I said. “The best way is to do dictation.”
“Dictation? What, ordering about?”
“Oh no; not that sort of dictation. I mean for me to read to you from a book and you write it down, and then I mark all the misspelt words, and you write them down and learn them.”
“Look at that now!” he exclaimed. “To be sure, that’s the way. Now, you know, I bought a spelling-book, that didn’t seem to do no good; so I bought a pocket dictionary, and that was such a job to go through, so full of breakneck words as no one never heard of before, that I give that up. Why, you ain’t innocent after all. Would you mind trying me?”
“Mind! no,” I cried; “we could use either a slate or paper.”
“So we could, and do it with either a pencil or a pen. I say, come: fair and square, I’ll teach you all I know if you’ll teach me all you know.”