[As Pip is learning to read, it dawns on him that his blacksmith brother-in-law may not be able to. In practicing to his writing, he wrote a note to Joe.]
“I say, Pip, old chap!” cried Joe, opening his blue eyes wide, “what a scholar you are! An’t you?”
“I should like to be,” said I, glancing at the slate as he held it: with a misgiving that the writing was rather hilly.
“Why, here’s a J,” said Joe, “and a O equal to anythink! Here’s a J and a O, Pip, and a J-O, Joe.”
I had never heard Joe read aloud to any greater extent that this monosyllable, and I had observed at church last Sunday when I accidentally held our Prayer-Book upside down, that it seemed to suit his convenience quite as well as if it had been all right. Wishing to embrace the present occasion of finding out whether in teaching Joe, I should have to begin quite at the beginning, I said, “Ah! But read the rest, Joe.”
“The rest, eh, Pip?” said Joe, looking at it with a slowly searching eye, “One, two, three. Why, here’s three Js and three Os, and three J-O, Joes in it, Pip!”
I leaned over Joe, and, with the aid of my forefinger, read him the whole letter.
“Astonishing!” said Joe, when I had finished. “You ARE a scholar.”
“How do you spell [your last name], Joe?” I asked him, with a modest patronage.
“I don’t spell it at all,” said Joe.
“But supposing you did?”“It can’t be supposed,” said Joe. “Tho’ I’m oncommon fond of reading too.”
“Are you, Joe?”
“On-common. Give me,” said Joe, “a good book or a good newspaper, and sit me down afore a good fire, and I ask no better. Lord!” he continued, after rubbing his knees a little, “when you do come to a J and a O, and says you, ‘Here, at last, is a J-O, Joe,’ how interesting reading is!”
