April 15th. We got up at 4 yesterday morning. We did not go into the
church for Mother was afraid that the smell of incense and boots would
make Dora feel bad. What rot! It was lovely. This afternoon we are going
to Ramsau, it's lovely there.

April 16th. Father went home to-day. We go home to-morrow. At
Whitsuntide Ada's mother is going to bring her to be confirmed. They
are all coming to stay with us. I got stuck in a bog on the bank of the
Ramsau. It was awful. But the doctor pulled me out and then we did all
laugh so when we saw what my shoes and stockings were like. Luckily I
was able to catch hold of a tree stump or I should have sunk right in.

April 18th. Hella says it was splendid at the Brioni Islands. She is
frightfully sunburned. I don't like that, so I shall _never_ go to the
_south_. Hella says that if one marries in winter one _must_ spend one's
honeymoon in the south. That would not suit me, I should just put off my
marriage till the summer.

Ada is only 13 not 14 like Dora, and the parish priest makes a
tremendous fuss because she's not confirmed yet. Her mother is going to
bring her to be confirmed soon. We are not going to be confirmed because
Father and Mother don't want to be bothered with it. Still I should like
to be confirmed, for then one _has_ to have a watch, and one can ask for
something else at Christmas.

April 21st. Our lessons are something frightful just now. The school
inspector is coming soon. It's always very disagreeable. Mme A. says:
The inspection is for the staff not for the pupils. Still, it's horrid
for the pupils too first of all because we get blamed at the time
and secondly because the staff makes such a frightful row about it
afterwards. Dora says that a bad inspection can make one's report 2
degrees worse. By the way, that reminds me that I have not yet written
why Oswald did not come home at Easter. _Although his reports were not
at all good_, he was allowed to go to Aunt Alma's at Pola, because this
year Richard comes home for the holidays for the last time. After that
he's going away for three years in the steamship "Ozean" to the East or
Turkey or Persia, I don't quite know where. If Oswald likes he can go
into the Navy too in two years.

May 9th. The school inspector came to-day, first of all in natural
history, thank goodness I wasn't in for it that time, and then in
German; I was in that, reading and in the table of contents of the
Wandering Bells. Thank goodness I got through all right.

May 14th. It's Mother's birthday to-day. We've had simply no time to
work anything for her, so we got a wonderful electric lamp for her bed
table, the switch is a bunch of grapes and the stand is made of brass.
She was so pleased with it. Yesterday Frau v. R. was here. She's a
friend of Mother's and of Hella's mother. I should like to have music
lessons from Frau v. R., she gives lessons since her husband who was a
major died though she is quite well off.

May 15th. That must have been true about the inspection; in the interval
to-day Professor Igel-Nikel said to the Herr Religionsprofessor: Well,
he will go on coming all through the week and then we shall be all right
for this year. _We_, of course that means the staff. But really the
staff can't help it if the pupils are no good. Though Oswald says it's
all the fault of the staff. I shall be glad too when the inspection is
over. The staff is always quite different when the inspector is there,
some are better, some are stricter, and Mme. A. says: I always feel
quite ill with anxiety.

May 29th. At Whitsuntide Frau Doctor Haslinger came from Hainfeld with
Ada and the two boys for the confirmation. On Whitsunday the doctor came
too and in the evening they all went home again. Ada is very pretty, but
she looks countrified. I'm not going to be confirmed anyhow. We had to
wait 3 hours, though the Friday before Whitsunday was a very fine day.
Dora did not come; only Mother and I and Ada and her mother. The
women who were selling white favours all thought that I was one of the
candidates because I wore a white dress too. Ada was rather put out
about it. On Saturday we were in town in the morning and afternoon
because Ada liked that better than the Kahlenberg; on Sunday morning we
went to Schonbrunn and in the afternoon they went home. The watch they
gave to Ada was a lovely one and Dora and I gave her a gold chain for a
locket. She enjoyed herself immensely, except that on Sunday she had a
frightful headache. Because she is not used to town noises.

May 31st. Ada knows a good deal already, but not everything. I told her
a few things. In H. last winter a girl drowned herself because she was
going to have a baby. It made a great sensation and her mother told her
a little, but not everything. Ada once saw a bitch having her pups, but
she didn't tell her mother about it; she thought that her mother might
be very angry. Still, she could not help it, the dog belonged to their
next door neighbour and she happened to see it in the out-house. Ada
is expecting _it_ to begin every day for she is nearly 14. In H. every
grown-up girl has an admirer. Ada says she will have one as soon as she
is 14; she knows who it will be.

June 3rd. Ada wrote to-day to thank Mother about the confirmation and
she wrote to me as well. It is strange that she did not make friends
with Dora but with me. I think that Dora won't talk about _those_
things, at least only with her friends in the high school, especially
with Frieda Ertl. That is why Ada made friends with me, though I am 2
years younger. She is really an awfully nice girl.

June 19th. One thing after another goes missing in our class, first
it was Fleischer's galoshes, then my new gloves, three times money was
missing, and today Fraulein Steiner's new vanity bag. There was a great
enquiry. But nothing was found out. We all think it is Schmolka. But