FIRST YEAR, AGE ELEVEN TO TWELVE
FIRST YEAR
July 12, 19 . . . Hella and I are writing a diary. We both agreed that when we went to the high school we would write a diary every day. Dora keeps a diary too, but she gets furious if I look at it. I call Helene “Hella,” and she calls me “Rita;” Helene and Grete are so vulgar. Dora has taken to calling herself “Thea,” but I go on calling her “Dora.” She says that little children (she means me and Hella) ought not to keep a diary. She says they will write such a lot of nonsense. No more than in hers and Lizzi’s.
July 13th. Really we were not to begin writing until after the holidays, but since we are both going away, we are beginning now. Then we shall know what we have been doing in the holidays.
The day before yesterday we had an entrance examination, it was very easy, in dictation I made only 1 mistake—writing ihn without h. The mistress said that didn’t matter, I had only made a slip. That is quite true, for I know well enough that ihn has an h in it. We were both dressed in white with rose-coloured ribbons, and everyone believed we were sisters or at least cousins. It would be very nice to have a cousin. But it’s still nicer to have a friend, for we can tell one another everything.
July 14th. The mistress was very kind. Because of her Hella and I are really sorry that we are not going to a middle school. Then every day before lessons began we could have had a talk with her in the class-room. But we’re awfully pleased because of the other girls. One is more important when one goes to the high school instead of only to the middle school. That is why the girls are in such a rage. “They are bursting with pride” (that’s what my sister says of me and Hella, but it is not true). “Our two students” said the mistress when we came away. She told us to write to her from the country. I shall.
July 15th. Lizzi, Hella’s sister, is not so horrid as Dora, she is always so nice! To-day she gave each of us at least ten chocolate-creams. It’s true Hella often says to me: “You don’t know her, what a beast she can be. Your sister is generally very nice to me.” Certainly it is very funny the way in which she always speaks of us as “the little ones” or “the children,” as if she had never been a child herself, and indeed a much littler one than we are. Besides we’re just the same as she is now. She is in the fourth class and we are in the first.
To-morrow we are going to Kaltenbach in Tyrol. I’m frightfully excited. Hella went away to-day to Hungary to her uncle and aunt with her mother and Lizzi. Her father is at manoeuvres.
July 19th. It’s awfully hard to write every day in the holidays. Everything is so new and one has no time to write. We are living in a big house in the forest. Dora bagged the front veranda straight off for her own writing. At the back of the house there are such swarms of horrid little flies; everything is black with flies. I do hate flies and such things. I’m not going to put up with being driven out of the front veranda. I won’t have it. Besides, Father said: “Don’t quarrel, children!” (Children to her too!!) He’s quite right. She puts on such airs because she’ll be fourteen in October. “The verandas are common property,” said Father. Father’s always so just. He never lets Dora lord it over me, but Mother often makes a favourite of Dora. I’m writing to Hella to-day. She’s not written to me yet.