not take more than two hours and a half, but we needed
more than three. For we were all very tired, and a great many of them
had sore feet, especially Aunt Alma! We had said before, that it would
be too much for Aunt; but she had to come with us to take care of
Marina, though Marina enjoyed herself _extremely_ with a Herr Furtner,
who is studying mining like Oswald, not in Leoben but in Germany. One
does not really find out what a girl is like until one sees how she
behaves with a man, or what she is like when one talks to her about
_certain things_; as for the last, of course that's impossible with
Marina _since the experience_ we had. But anyhow she is nicer than
one would have thought at first sight. It was lovely on the way home.
Driving back from Unter-Toifen we sat quite differently.

In our break, instead of the Weiners, there were three students from
Munich, they were awfully nice, and we sang all the songs we knew;
especially "Hoch vom Dachstein, wo der Aar nur haust," and "Forelle"
and "Wo mein Schatz ist," were lovely, and the people in two different
breaks sang together. And then some of them sang some Alpine songs and
yodelled till the hills echoed. Two or three of the men in the third
break were rather tipsy and _Hero Siegfried!!_ was one of them. Aunt
Alma had a frightful headache; it was utterly idiotic for her to come,
and we did not know yet what was still to happen. At every house from
which a girl had come there was a serenade. And next evening there was
to be a great raffle of the mementoes we had bought, but Father would
not let us go to that.

August 14th. It is desperately dull. I don't know what on earth to do,
so I am writing my diary. Besides, I have not written about the row yet.
The next afternoon Aunt Alma came just as we were going out and said to
Father: Ernst, please let me have a word with you. Now we all know Aunt
Alma's _let me have a word with you_. In plain language it means: I'm
going to make a scene. She began: "Ernst, you know I never like these
big parties with a lot of strangers, for no good can come of them.
Still, I made up my mind to go for the sake of the children, and chiefly
for the sake of _your motherless_ children. (Nobody asked her to; and
Aunt Dora had to stay at home on her account.) Do you know what sort of
people were in our company? That impudent young student whom Gretel is
always running after (did you ever hear anything like it! I should like
to know when I r