it's quite different in the
encyclopedia from what Prof. Rigl told her last year." I was saved. Dora
can act splendidly; I've noticed it before. In the evening she rowed me,
and said: "You little goose, will you never learn caution; first that
stupidity about Viktor and to-day this new blunder! I've helped you out
of a hole once but I shan't do it again." And then she spent all the
time writing a letter, to him of course--! Hella and I have just been
reading a lot of things in the encycl., about _Birth_ and _Pregnancy_,
and I on my own about abor--; we came across the words Embyro
and Foetus, and I said nothing at the time but tied 2 knots in my
handkerchief to remind me, and yesterday I looked them up. Mad. need
not be anxious even if she _really_ did get like that. But every doctor
knows about it and one often dies of it. I wonder if Mad. knows anything
about it. We were talking about the _differences_ between men and women,
and it came out that when Hella has her bath she is still washed by Anna
who has been with them for 12 years. Nothing would induce me to allow
that, I would not let anyone wash me, except Mother; certainly not Dora,
for I don't want her to know what _I_ look like. The nurse in the hosp.
told Hella that she is developed just like a little nymph, so lovely and
symetrical. Hella says that is nothing unusual, that every girl looks
like that, that the female body is _Nature's Work of Art_. Of course
she's read that somewhere, for it does not really mean anything.
_Nature's_ work of art; it ought to be: a work of art made by husband
and wife!!!

May 30th. Dora and Mother are going to Franzensbad on June 6th, directly
after Whitsuntide. Dora has got another new coat and skirt, grey with
blue stripes; yesterday our white straw hats came, it suits me very well
says Hella and everyone, with white ribbons and wild roses. There might
have been a fearful row about what's just happened. When I went to
telephone I had my Christmas umbrella with the rose-quartz handle and
I left it in the telephone box; the girl in the tobacco shop found it
there, and as she knows me she brought it here and gave it to the porter
who brought it upstairs. Thank goodness it occurred to me at once to say
that I went into the tobacco shop to buy stamps and I must have left it
in the _shop_. No one noticed anything.

May 31st. They wanted me to go and stay with Hella for the month when
Mother and Dora are away. It would be awfully ni