trimmed red-brown. We must not always be dressed alike. Hella and Lizzi
are never dressed alike.

March 8th. I shall never say another word to Berta Franker she's utterly
false. I've such a frightful headache because I cried all through
the lesson. She wrote to Hella and me in the arithmetic lesson: A
_Verhaltnis_ ** means something quite different. Just at that moment the
mistress looked across and said: To whom were you nodding? She said: To
Lainer. Because she laughed at the word "Verhaltnis." It was not true.
I had not thought about the word at all. It wasn't till I had read the
note that it occurred to Hella and me what _Verhaltnis_ means. After the
lesson Fraulein St. called us down into the teachers' room and told
Frau Doktor M. that Franke and I had laughed at the use of the word
"Verhaltnis." Frau Doktor said: What was there to laugh at? Why did you
not just do your sums? Fraulein St. said: You ought to be ashamed of
yourselves, young girls in the first class shouldn't know anything about
such things. I shall have to speak to your mothers. In the German lesson
Frau Doktor M. told us to write an essay on the proverb: Pure the
heart and true the word, clear the brow and free the eye, these are our
safeguards, or something of that sort; I must get Hella to write it for
me, for I was crying all through the lesson.

** The German word Verhaltnis as used in the arithmetic lesson
means ratio, proportion. The word is in common use in
Germany for a love intimacy or liaison.--Translators' Note.

March 10th. To-day Berta Franke wanted to talk things out with us; but
Hella and I told her we would not speak to her again. We told her to
remember _what sort_ of things she had said to us. She denied it all
already. We shouldn't be such humbugs. It was mean of her. Really we