I've been thinking a good deal about the conversation with Helga yesterday, and her notes. I am sure I could never be as detail-oriented as Helga, nor capture so much in such brief meetings, but perhaps she's right that in order to have a successful season one must take special care to note the men one meets and remember some things about them.

It would be wholly inappropriate, I think, were I to have a book like Helga's, particularly since I'm not yet out and shouldn't be meeting any men yet, but perhaps to better prepare myself for May I might make some notes in the corner of my sketchbook... surely no one would care to look at a silly young girl's sketchbook, and no one will think a second thought about my carrying it around and scribbling things down in it. I could not undertake to keep a secret notebook as Helga has, particularly not while I'm staying with the Scamanders... and I dare not share my thoughts with Helga, for beside her own notes they would look so terribly inadequate... and suppose we disagreed about something? I should never get over it.

---

Beginning with Mr. Aaldenberg, from the weekend.

I did try to draw him smiling but I'm afraid he only looks like he's grimacing. I promise he was perfectly pleasant, not a gargoyle as he appears here...

I ran out of room to write his name without scrunching up the script and making it illegible, so I had to take a second line. I ought to plan better next time.

Oh! But these notes are meant to be about the gentlemen, not the drawing, aren't they? What was it Helga wrote about him? Now, of course, I can't remember a thing...

In my sketch his eyebrow looks crooked and his tophat lopsided, but only because of my poor drawing skills. He was perfectly well dressed, and I was trying to capture that expression he had — he always seemed so interested in what we were saying even though I'm sure I had nothing interesting to say — but now it only looks as though he has some sort of birth defect afflicting his right eye...

---