a to-morrow afternoon, but
she can't. She's an awfully nice girl and her brother is too, but on the
first day Hella is back we must be alone together. She said so too in
the last letter she wrote me. She's been away more than 3 weeks. It's a
frightfully long time when you are fond of one another.

February 15th. I simply can't write my diary because Hella and I spend
all our free time together. Yesterday we got our reports. Of course
Hella has not got one. Except in Geography and History I have nothing
but Ones, even in Natural History although since New Year I have not
done any work in that subject. I detest Natural History. When Hella
comes back to school we are going to ask the _sometime_ S. G. to relieve
us from the labours of looking after the things. Hella is still too
weak to do it. Hella is 13 already and Father says she is going to
be wonderfully pretty. _Going to be_, Father says; but she's lovely
already. She's been burned as brown as a berry by the warm southern sun,
and it really suits _her_, though only her. I can't stand other people
when they are sun-burned. But really everything suits Hella; when she
was so pale in hospital, she was lovely; and now she is just as lovely,
only in quite a different way. Oswald is quite right when he says:
You can measure a girl's beauty by the degree in which she bears being
sunburned without losing her good looks. He really used to say that in
the holidays simply to annoy Dora and me, but he's quite right all the
same.

February 20th. The second half-year began yesterday. They were all
awfully nice to Hella, and Frau Doktor M. stroked her cheeks and put her
arm round her so affectionately. Now for the chief thing. Today was the
Natural History lesson. We knocked at the door and when we went in Prof.
W. said: Ah I'm glad to see you Bruckner; take care that you don't give
us all another fright. How are you? Hella said: "Quite well, thank you,
Herr Prof." And as I looked at her she put on a frightfully serious
face and he said: It seems to me that you've caught your friend's ill
humour.--Hella: "Herr Prof., you are really too kind, but we don't want
to trouble you. What things have we to take to the class-room? And then
we beg leave to resign our posts, for I don't feel strong enough for the
work." She said this in quite a soldierly way, the way she is used to
hear her father speak. It sounded most distinguished. He looked at us
and said: "All right, two of the other pupil