spectacles. But now I'm quite certain she is not deceitful, so one sees
how easy it is to make a mistake. To-morrow's our German lesson.

December 6th. Frau Doktor did not say anything at first. Then she gave
out the subject for the essay: "Why once I could not go to sleep at
night." The girls were all taken aback, and then Frau Doktor said:
Now girls that's not so very difficult. One person cannot go to sleep
because he's just going to be ill, another because he is excited by joy
or fear. Another has an uneasy conscience because he has done something
which he has been forbidden to do; have not all of you experienced
something of the kind? Then she looked frightfully hard at Edith Bergler
and us two. She did not say anything more, so we don't really know if
she suspects. I couldn't go to the ice carnival yesterday because I
had such a bad cough, and Dora couldn't go either because she had a
headache; I don't know whether it was a real headache or _that kind_ of
headache; but I expect it was that kind.

December 17th. I haven't managed to write anything for a whole week.
The day before yesterday we had our Christmas reports: In history I had
satisfactory, in Natural History good, in everything else very good. In
diligence because of that stupid Vischer I had only a 2. Father was very
angry; he says everyone can get a 1 in diligence. That's true enough,
but if one has satisfactory in anything then one can't get a 1 for
diligence. Inspee of course had only 1's, except a 2 in English. But
then she's a frightful swot. Verbenowitsch is the best in our class, but
we can't any of us bear her, she's so frantically conceited and Berta
Franke says she's _not to be trusted_. Berta walks to school with her
cousin who's in the seventh; she's nearly 14, and is awfully pretty. She
didn't say what sort of a report she had, but I believe it was a very
bad one.