sease
and that is really what makes them so frightfully interesting. Then I
told her what Ada had told me about the actor in St. P. But Hella said:
I doubt if that's all true; of course it is more likely since he was
an actor, and especially since he was in the army at one time, but
generally speaking civilians are _wonderfully_ healthy!!! And she could
not stand that in her husband. Every officer has _lived_ frantically;
that's a polite phrase for having had venereal disease, and she would
never marry a man who had not _lived_. Most girls, especially when
they get a little older; want the very opposite! and then it suddenly
occurred to me that _that_ was probably the _real_ reason why Dora _bade
farewell_ to _Lieutenant R_., and not the _friendship with Mother_;
it is really awfully funny, and no one would have thought it of her.
Hella's father thinks me _charming_; he is really awfully nice. Hella's
uncle hardly ever says anything, and when he does speak he is difficult
to understand; Hella's father says that his sister-in-law wears the
breeches. That would never do for me; the man must be the _master_. "But
not too much so" says Hella. She always gets cross when her father says
that about wearing breeches. I got an awful start yesterday; we went
out on the veranda because we heard the boys talking, and found Hella's
great uncle lying there on an invalid couch. She told me about him once,
that he's quite off his head, not really paralysed but only pretends to
be. Hella is terribly afraid of him, because long ago, when she was only
9 or 10 years old, he wanted to give her a thrashing. But her uncle came
in, and then he let her go. She says he was only humbugging, but she is
awfully afraid of him all the same. He keeps his room, and he has a male
attendant, because no nurse can manage him. He ought really to be in an
asylum but there is no high class asylum in Hungary.

September 9th. There was a frightful rumpus this morning; the great
uncle, the people here call him "kutya mog" or however they spell it,
and it means _mad dog_, well, the great uncle _spied in on us_. He can
walk with a stick, our room is on the ground floor, and he came and
planted himself in front of the window when Hella was washing and I was
just getting out of bed. Then Hella's father came and made a tremendous
row and the uncle swore horribly in Hungarian. Before dinner we
overheard Hella's father say to Aunt Olga: "They would be dainty morsels
fo