HKB
Dramatic Art so that she could more easily get a good Theatre says Ada. So I don’t see why it should be so frightfully expensive. I’m awfully sorry for Ada.
September 10th. Oh we have all been so excited. I’ve got to pack up my diary because we’re going home to-morrow. I must write as quickly as I can. There have been some gypsies here for three days, and yesterday one of the women came into the garden through the back gate and looked at our hands and told our fortunes, mine and Ada’s and Dora’s. Of course we don’t believe it, but she told Ada that she would have a great but short career after many difficult struggles. That fits in perfectly. But she made a frightful mess of it with me: Great happiness awaits me when I am as old again as I am now; a great passion and great wealth. Of course that must mean that I am to marry at 24. At 24! How absurd! Dora says that I look much younger than 12 so that she meant 20 or even 18. But that’s just as silly, for Dr. H., who is a doctor and knows so many girls, says I look older than my age. So that it’s impossible that the old gypsy woman could have thought I was only 10 or even 9. Dora’s fortune was that in a few years she was to have much trouble and then happiness. And she told Ada that her line of life was broken!!
September 14th. Oswald left early this morning, Father kissed him on both cheeks and said: For God’s sake be a good chap this last year at school. He has to matriculate this year, it’s frightfully difficult. But he says that anyone who has cheek enough can get through all right. He says that cheek is often more help than a lot of swoting and grinding. I know he’s right; but unfortunately at the moment it never occurs to me what I ought to do. I often think afterwards, you ought to have said this or that. Hella is really wonderful; and Franke too, though she’s not particularly clever, can always make a smart answer. If only half of what Oswald says he says to the professors is true, then I can’t understand why he is not expelled from every Gym. says Mother. Oswald says: If one only puts it in the right way no one can say anything. But that doesn’t hold always.
September 16th. Hella is coming back to-day. That’s why I’m writing in the morning, because she’s coming here in the afternoon. I’m awfully glad. I have begged Mother to buy a lovely cake, one of the kind Hella and I are both so fond of.
September 20th. Only a word or two. School began again to-day. Thank goodness Frau Doktor M. still takes our class. Frl. Steiner took her doctor’s degree at the end of the school year. In history we have a new Frau Doktor, but we don’t know her name yet. The Vischer woman has been married in the holidays!!! It’s enough to make one split with laughing that anyone should marry her!!! Dora says she wouldn’t like to be her husband; but most likely he will soon get a divorce. Besides, spectacles in a woman are awful. I can put up with a pincenez for one does not wear them all the time. But spectacles! Dora says too that she can’t understand how a man can marry a woman with spectacles. Hella often says it makes her feel quite sick when Vischer glares at her through her spectacles. We have a new natural history professor. I’m awfully glad that three of our mistresses have doctors degrees and that we have one or really 2 professors, for we have the Religionsprofessor too. In the Third they are frightfully annoyed because only one of their mistresses has a doctor’s degree. Dora has 2 doctors and three professors.