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Show Kathleen Norris Says: The 'Dear Woman Friend' Bell Syndicate. WNU Features. "EfrV discovered to her consternation that Russ and Nancy were falling in love." y EVERYONE HURT A letter to Miss Norris reveals re-veals one of the unhappy aftermaths after-maths of war. Edie married a man whom she had known only on-ly for a few months. He was away in service for four years. During his absence, a baby was born. Edie lived with her mother, who cared for the little lit-tle girl while Edie worked at a well-paying war job. Then Edie's old chum Nancy came to board with her. When Edie's husband was discharged, he had to come into the house with the women and the baby. He turned to Nancy for companionship, com-panionship, rather than his wife. Before they realized it, they were in love. Finally Nancy had to confess to Edie that she was going to have a baby and that its father was Russ. Edie does not know what to do under these painful circumstances. By KATHLEEN NORRIS EDIE'S marriage took place in the first months of the war, and has gone on the rocks. It isn't her fault, unless indeed it was a fault to marry a man she had known only a few weeks. However, she was not the only girl to do that in 1942, and she and Buss had some happy months together, to-gether, before he was ordered away to the South Seas. Edie settled down in her old home with her mother to wait for the baby; she did not see Russ again lor almost four years. In the second of those years, her old chum Nancy came to board with her, and all three women adored and spoiled little Sonia. Edie and Nancy had good jobs; everyone was happy. Then Russ came home, to find that, first, he'd earn less money than Edie, for a while at least; second, sec-ond, that his lovely little daughter didn't, like him, and third, that he was more lonely at home than he had ever been abroad. Adjustments were difficult, and by the time they began to smooth out, Edie discovered discov-ered to her consternation that Russ and Nancy were falling in love. "I had never suspected it, I had never dreamed it," says Edie's heartbroken letter. "Russ and I had been talking of finding a little place for ourselves, but there was so little lit-tle choice of places, his prospects were so uncertain, and my job still so absorbing that there seemed to be no hurry about it. To mother and little Sonia and me this time of reunion seemed heavenly. Then suddenly it all broke, and Nancy confessed that she and my husband were not only deeply in love, but that the baby she was expecting was his child. She was covered with shame and remorse but that was the situation, and what were we all to do? Nancy Manages Household. "A complication is that my mother moth-er has not been well, and Nancy, who is very capable, has been managing man-aging things at home and taking care of her, too. Mother has always been devoted to Nancy, and is shattered shat-tered by this terrible revelation. Russ is sullen and silent. Nancy goes on about household duties with her face like a mask, and I feel frantic with despair. What on earth is the way out? If they have fallen in love, seeing each other every day as they have, living under un-der the same roof, are they to blame? Am I to blame for going on with my $75 a week job, which with my mother's thousand a year is all we have? Surely it was not wrong to offer my friend a haven In my home, when she was widowed and heartbroken? I am an ordinarily nice-looking woman of 28, always neat and smartly-dressed, but not glamorous. Nancy is 24, tiny, very pretty, appealing. Please send advice ad-vice for us all; they know I am writing you." ... My dear Edie, I wrote her in reply, re-ply, this is no one's fault; it is one more result of the supreme folly of war. That Nancy should be widowed wid-owed so young was a direct result of war. That you and Russ should have been separated in the first important im-portant married years is another. That Sonia should not have known her father in her babyhood, that you should now be the curiously- assorted family's chief bread-winner, and that the war hero should be humbly hunting a jot) all this is wrong. The doubled-up family works an injustice on you all. Things have become pretty hopelessly complicated, com-plicated, and only infinite patience and time can work them out And over and above all these unnatural un-natural difficulties, surely the rights of Nancy's child deserve first consideration; con-sideration; whatever happens, this unfortunate baby enters life heavily handicapped. To divorce Russ, to have him rush into marriage with Nancy, would only be to mix things up further. She Knew the Risk. So my advice is, first, that Nancy get out. She was no ignorant innocent inno-cent child when she surrendered to the delights of a flirtation with Russ. She knew that Russ was, and is still, the husband of her best friend, the husband of the woman who stretched out a hand to her in her loneliness and need. Exactly how she betrayed that generosity is something that the months to come are going to bring home to this unscrupulous un-scrupulous little woman. If Russ goes away with her, as he well may, Edie is no worse off than before. It will give her time to breathe and to think everything over. But Russ may not go with her. Russ is comfortable now in the old home, with his wife and child. Nancy is the outlaw, and Nancy will have to go to some city hospital, get a job in the kitchen or linen room, as women in her distressed circumstances circum-stances often do, and give her baby out for adoption; any conscientious foster-parent will give it a better break than she can, and may she come back a wiser woman. And an honester one. Love does indeed take a man and woman unawares sometimes. But not in' this case. If Huss, still war-bewildered, uncertain, embarrassed embar-rassed by his joblessnesi and im-pecuniosity, im-pecuniosity, was weak in being flattered flat-tered and companioned by this pretty little housemae, Nancy wasn't. She had no such excuse. She considered neither the rights of Russ, Edie, Sonia or the unborn baby. She thought of exactly one person herself. That Is always an expensive proceeding 'n these questions ques-tions of a triangle. INVISIBLE FLAME Campers next summer will be able to cook hamburgers and coffee over an "invisible flameless" flame. At least, that is how Du Pont describes de-scribes its new tablet fuel made from trioxane, a form of formaldehyde. formalde-hyde. The fuel, produced for the first time on a commercial scale, ignites instantly with a nonluminous flame not easily blown out by wind. It was used during the war experimentally experi-mentally in the search for a fuel to heat field rations without disclos-ing disclos-ing positions of troops to the enemy. tIncy't unfortunate baby . . . |