iculation he said in
so many words: "How delightful to have one's legs under one's own table
again and to breathe the _family atmosphere_." Dora promptly said to
him: "Hm, you don't seem to care so very much about home, for always
when you come home for the holidays the first thing you do is to make
plans for getting away." For she is annoyed too that Oswald can
travel about wherever he likes. And yet he goes on talking about being
"_subjected to intolerable supervision"!!_ What about us? He can stay
out until 10 at night and _never_ comes to afternoon tea, and in fact
does just what he likes. If I go to supper with Hella and am just ever
so little late, there's a fine row. As for the lectures poor Dora had
to endure when Viktor was waiting for her, I shall never forget them.
Of course she denies it all now, but I was present at some of them so
I know; otherwise he would not have called me "the Guardian Angel." She
behaves now as if she had forgotten all about that, so I often remind
her of it on purpose when we are alone together. The other day she said:
"I do beg you, Grete (not Rita), don't speak any more of that matter; I
have buried the affair for ever." And when I said: "Buried, what do you
mean? A true love can't simply be _buried_ like that," she said: "It was
not a true love, and that's all there is to say about it."

October 16th. I had a frantically anxious time in the arithmetic lesson
to-day. All of a sudden Hella flushed dark red and I thought to myself:
Aha, that's it! And I wrote to her on my black-line paper: Has it
begun??? for we had agreed that she would tell me directly, she will be
14 in February and _it_ will certainly begin soon. Frau Doktor F. said:
Lainer, what was that you pushed over to Br.? and she came up to
the desk and took the black-line paper. "What does that mean: Has it
begun???" Perhaps she really did not know what I meant, but several of
the girls who knew about it too laughed, and I was in a terrible fright.
But Hella was simply splendid. "Excuse me, Frau Doktor, Rita asked
whether the frost had begun yet." "And that's the way you spend your
time in the mathematics lesson?" But thank goodness that made things all
right. Only in the interval Hella said that really I am inconceivably
stupid sometimes. What on earth did I want to write a thing like that
for? _When_ it begins, _of course_ she will let me know directly. As a
matter of fact it has _not_ begun yet. We have agreed now that