Shunshoku Umegoyomi Vol. 1: Kihei-don

Fig. 1: よね
「宅のようふす
は大変サ。

Fig. 2: 鬼兵衛どん
の氣じやア。

We've spent a lot of time talking about Tanjirou's house until now. Now we finally learn a little bit about where Yonehachi lives. Last time, Tanjirou had just asked Yonehachi how things were at her house. She replies:

"The state of affairs at [my] house is dreadful (fig. 1). It's that Kihei-don wants (fig. 2) to be called "master" by everyone (fig. 3)."

Notice how in the previous sentence (fig. 5 of this post), the 「す」 in 「よふす」 was written with the common 「寸」. Yet just one sentence later, 「春」 was used instead. I'd really like to know if there's any rhyme or reason behind the selection ― perhaps some undertone implied by them.

Edit: according to Chris in the comments below, there has been no prior evidence of a pattern in kana selection.

Fig. 3: 皆に
旦那さんと
いはれてへ
心持で居ま
すのサ。

Fig. 4: それ
だけれど

Deciphering the kanji for "Kihei" was quite challenging, since there are so many possibilities. The first one was quite easy to determine to be 「鬼」, but for the latter two, I turned to Tangorin's name search. Note that which kana you search with matter ― only 「きへい」 brought up a result with the correct first character （「鬼」）, while only 「きへえ」 brought up results with 「兵衛」 for the second and third kana.

The honorific 「どん」 is a dialectic form of 「どの」, a polite suffix, often used for apprentices. In any case, we can assume that it possesses less authority than "master".

"Even so (fig. 4), the situation was also like that even when his wife was still in good health, so (fig. 5) why has it turned out like that? (fig. 6)"

Fig. 6: どふして
そふいふ様に
いきますのか。

The first thing to note here is (from fig. 5) the word 「在世（たつしや）」, which means "being alive" and is read as 「ざいせい」 in modern Japanese. The irregular reading comes from the word 「達者」, meaning "in good health" and read as 「たっしゃ」. The meanings are clearly similar, so Tamenaga just interchanged their readings.

Fig. 5: 御内室
の在世な時
さへあのとふり
の理由だもの
を。

Also in fig. 5, note the word 「理由（わけ）」, which uses a rare reading while having the same meaning as 「わけ」 in modern Japanese: "circumstances"/"situation".

Finally, at the end of fig. 5 is the phrase 「ものを」, which functions in the same way as it did in the previous post (fig. 2).