not just do your sums? Fraulein St. said: You ought to be ashamed of
yourselves, young girls in the first class shouldn't know anything about
such things. I shall have to speak to your mothers. In the German lesson
Frau Doktor M. told us to write an essay on the proverb: Pure the
heart and true the word, clear the brow and free the eye, these are our
safeguards, or something of that sort; I must get Hella to write it for
me, for I was crying all through the lesson.

     ** The German word Verhaltnis as used in the arithmetic lesson
     means ratio, proportion. The word is in common use in
     Germany for a love intimacy or liaison.--Translators' Note.

March 10th. To-day Berta Franke wanted to talk things out with us; but
Hella and I told her we would not speak to her again. We told her to
remember _what sort_ of things she had said to us. She denied it all
already. We shouldn't be such humbugs. It was mean of her. Really we
didn't know anything and _she_ told us all about it. Hella has told
me again and again she wished we didn't know anything. She says she's
always afraid of giving herself away and that she often thinks about
that sort of thing when she ought to be learning her lessons. So do
I. And one often dreams about such things at night when one has been
talking about them in the afternoon. Still, it's better to know all
about it.

March 22nd. I so seldom manage to write anything, first of all our
lessons take such a lot of time, and second because I don't care about
it any more since what Father said the other day. The last time I wrote
was on Saturday afternoon, and Father came in and said: Come along
children, we'll go to Schonbrunn. That will do you more good than
scribbling diaries which you only go and lose when you've written them.
So Mother told Father all about it in the holidays. I couldn't have
believed it of Mother for I begged her to promise not to tell anyone.
And she said: One doesn't promise about a thing like that; but I won't
tell anyone. And now she must have told about it, although she said she
wouldn't. Even Franke's deceitfulness was nothing to that for after all
we've only known her since last autumn, but I could never have believed
that Mother would do such a thing. I told Hella when we were having tea
at the Tivoli and she said she would not altogether trust her mother,
she'd rather trust her father. But if that had happened to _her_, her
father would have boxed her ears with the diary. I did not want to show
anything, but in the evening I only gave Mother quite a little kiss. And
she said, what's the matter, dear? has anything happened? Then I could
not keep it in and I cried like anything and said: You've betrayed me.
And Mother said: "I?" Yes, you; you told Father about the diary though
you promised me you wouldn't. At first Mother didn't remember anything
about it, but soon she remembered and said: "But, little one, I tell
Father everything. All you meant was that Dora was not to know." That's
quite true, it's all right that Dora wasn't told; but still Father need
not have been told either. And Mother was awfully sweet and nice and I
didn't go to bed till 10 o'clock. But whatever happens I shan't tell
her anything again and I don't care about the old diary any more. Hella
says: Don't be stupid; I ought just to go on writing; but another time
I should be careful not to lose anything, and besides I should not blab
everything to Mother and Father. She says she no longer tells her mother
anything since that time in the summer when her mother gave her a box on
the ear because that other girl had told her all about everything. It's
quite true, Hella is right, I'm just a child still in the way I run to
Mother and tell her everything. And it's not nice of Father to tease me
about my diary; I suppose he never kept one himself.

March 27th. Hurrah we're going to Hainfeld for Easter; I am so
delighted. Mother has a friend there whose husband is doctor there, so
she has to live there all the year round. Last year in the winter she
and Ada stayed three days with us because her eyes were bad. Ada is
really nearly as old as Dora, but Dora said, like her cheek: "Her
intellectual level makes her much more suitable company for you than for
me." Dora thinks herself cleverer than anyone else. They have 2 boys,
but I don't know them very well for they are only 8 and 9. Mother's
friend was in an asylum once, for she went off her head when her 2 year
old baby died. I remember it quite well. It must have been more than 2
years ago when Father and Mother were always talking of poor Anna who
had lost her child within 3 days. And I believed she had really lost it,
and once I asked whether they had found it yet. I thought it had been
lost in the forest, because there's such a great forest at Hainfeld. And
since then I can't bear to hear people say lost when they mean dead, for
it is so difficult to know which they really mean.

On the 8th of April the Easter holidays will begin and we shall go on
the 11th, on Maundy Thursday.

April 6th. I don't know what to do about writing my diary. I don't want
to take it with me and as for remembering everything and writing it down
afterwards I know quite well I should never do that. Hella says I should
only jot it down in outline, that's what Frau Doktor M. always says, and
write it out properly after I come back from Hainfeld. That's what she
does. They are going to the Brioni Islands. I've never seen the sea.
Hella says there's nothing so wonderful about it. She's been there four
times. Anyway she does not think so much of it as most people do. So it
can't be anything so frightfully grand. Rather stupid I dare say.

April 12th. We got here yesterday. Ada is a darling but the two boys
are awfully vulgar. Ernstl said to Ada: I shall give you a smack on the
a---- if you don't give me my pistol directly. Ada is as tall as her
mother. Their speech is rather countrified Even the doctor's. He drinks
a frightful lot of beer; quarts I believe.

April 14th. Father came to-day. He's awfully fond of the doctor. They
kissed one another. It did make me laugh. In the morning we were in
the forest; but there are no violets yet, only a few snowdrops, but a
tremendous lot of hellebores quite red.