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.
Pages:
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113