ssed, so that I couldn't see. Ugh! Catch me looking! It begins at
14 and goes on for 20 years or more. Hella says that Berta Franke in our
class knows all about it. In the arithmetic lesson she wrote a note: Do
you know what being un . . . is? Hella wrote back, of course I've known
it for a long time. Berta waited for her after class when the Catholics
were having their religion lesson and they went home together. I
remember quite well that I was very angry, for they're not chums. On
Tuesday Berta came with us, for Hella had sent her a note in class
saying that I knew _everything_ and she needn't bother about me. Inspee
suspects something, she's always spying about and sneering, perhaps she
thinks that she's the only person who ought to know anything.

October 16th. To-morrow is Father's and Dora's birthday. Every year it
annoys me that Dora should have her birthday on the same day as Father;
What annoys me most of all is that she is so cocky about it, for, as
Father always says, it's a mere chance. Besides, I don't think he really
likes it. Everyone wants to have their own birthday on their own day,
not to share it with someone else. And it's always nasty to be stuck up
about a thing like that. Besides, it's not going to be a real birthday
because of the row about Oswald. Father is still furious and had to stay
away from the office for 2 days because he had to go to G. to see about
Oswald going there.

October 17th. It was much jollier to-day than I had expected. All the
Bruckners came, so of course there was not much said about Oswald only
that he has sprained his ankle, (I know quite well now that that's not
true) and that he is probably going to G. Colonel B. said: The best
thing for a boy is to send him to a military academy, that keeps him
in order. In the evening Oswald said: That was awful rot what Hella's
father said, for you can be expelled from a military academy just as
easily as from the Gymnasium. That's what happened to Edgar Groller.
Oswald gave himself away and Dora promptly said: Ah, so you have been
expelled, and we believed you had sprained your ankle. Then he got in
an awful wax and said: O you wretched flappers, I've gone and blabbed it
all now, and he went away slamming the door, for Mother wasn't there.

October 19th. If we could only find out what Oswald really did. It must
have been something with a girl. But we can't think what Father meant
about a married woman. Perhaps a married woman compl