have to speak to your mothers. In the German lesson
Frau Doktor M. told us to write an essay on the proverb: Pure the
heart and true the word, clear the brow and free the eye, these are our
safeguards, or something of that sort; I must get Hella to write it for
me, for I was crying all through the lesson.

** The German word Verhaltnis as used in the arithmetic lesson
means ratio, proportion. The word is in common use in
Germany for a love intimacy or liaison.--Translators' Note.

March 10th. To-day Berta Franke wanted to talk things out with us; but
Hella and I told her we would not speak to her again. We told her to
remember _what sort_ of things she had said to us. She denied it all
already. We shouldn't be such humbugs. It was mean of her. Really we
didn't know anything and _she_ told us all about it. Hella has told
me again and again she wished we didn't know anything. She says she's
always afraid of giving herself away and that she often thinks about
that sort of thing when she ought to be learning her lessons. So do
I. And one often dreams about such things at night when one has been
talking about them in the afternoon. Still, it's better to know all
about it.

March 22nd. I so seldom manage to write anything, first of all our
lessons take such a lot of time, and second because I don't care about
it any more since what Father said the other day. The last time I wrote
was on Saturday afternoon, and Father came in and said: Come along
children, we'll go to Schonbrunn. That will do you more good than
scribbling diaries which you only go and lose when you've written them.
So Mother told Father all about it in the holidays. I couldn't have
believed it of Mother for I begged her to promise not to tell anyone.
And she said: One doesn't promise about a thing like that; but I won't
tell anyone. And now she must have told about it, although she said she
wouldn't. Even Franke's deceitfulness was nothing to that for after all
we've only known her since last autumn, but I could never have believed
that Mother would do such a thing. I told Hella when we were having tea
at the Tivoli and she said she would not altogether trust her mother,
she'd rather trust her father. But if that had happened to _her_, her
father would have boxed her ears with the diary. I did not want to show
anything, but in the evening I only gave Mother quite a little kiss. And
she said, what's the matter, dear? has anything happened? Then