Radio romances (July-Dec 1945)

J/tfO^ /&uz; You've dreamed of the perfect romance— and now you have it! You've dreamed of the perfect diamond to symbolize that love — and now you can be sure of that perfection by selecting a Bluebird Diamond Ring. For every Bluebird is guaranteed perfect.' Send for your free copy of "The Book That Lovers Love." Complete details of judging diamonds. Mail FAMOUS REGISTERED W4L Jlto THEY'RE PERFECT MAIL COUPON NOW BLUEBIRD DIAMOND SYNDICATE, Dept. 5-MM 55 East Washington St., Chicago 2, III. Please send your FREE booklet, "The Book That Lovers Love." 55 Name.. , Address. City.... .Zone. .State. To Be in Love Continued from page 41 nearest thing to an "estate" in Penbury. The family had been a part of Penbury life for generations, and there were plenty of poor relation Byrneses scattered around town, but even they held themselves so much apart that I would have been surprised if it had been one of them who brought Janet home. For a Walnut Hill Byrnes to have driven home one of my girls — one of the Penbury Mill girls — was extraordinary. And Carl — the most remote, the most brilliantly-colored of the lot, who flashed in and out of town without ever seeming to touch it, who carried about him the faint report of having been in far-off places— Mexico, wasn't it, or South America . . .? There was something wrong with my mental picture of Janet beside him, and I thought I knew what it was. It was because girls wh» worked in the Penbury Textile Mill didn't get driven home by men who owned the mill — or whose fathers owned the mill, which came to the same thing. My eyes went to Janet's face and stayed there, caught by something new in her expression. She looked soft and sort of sparkling at the same time — almost radiant; I had never seen her blue eyes so brilliant, or noticed before the clear-cut delicacy of her profile. Her animation troubled me. "It's impossible," I thought. Then — what's impossible? I asked myself. That Janet should have come home in Carl Byrnes' car? But she did. No, what's impossible is that anything more should come of it . . . Janet will be hurt ... As if she felt the force of my thought, Janet turned to me with a smile of such vibrant happiness that my eyes wavered from it. She would be hurt! One or another of the girls often came to my room at night, if there was something special on their minds. That night, when I heard a soft double knock I knew it was Janet, and as I let her in I wondered how to say what I wanted to say without wiping all of that new radiance from her face. "Carl asked if he could call me," she burst out, almost before she had curled up at the foot of my bed. "I said yes, of course. Jean — did you get a good enough look at him? He's terribly nice—" "He's been brought up to be nice," I answered, more sharply than I had intended. "Yes, I guess so. He's been away in South America . . ." Janet stopped and looked at me, her smile fading. "Jean — what's the matter? Didn't you like him?" I shrugged. "I don't know him. He looks nice enough, but anyone would in those clothes and with that car. And you don't know him, really; he practically picked you up." Over Janet's face came the look we all knew. Janet was a gentle, calm girl; she never argued; but when she got that look on her face it always meant that there was something she had decided to do, and that nobody could stop her or swerve her an inch. "That's not true," she said. "I really had hurt my ankle. And anyway, it's not as though he were just anybody." "Oh, Janet, that's just it — he's not just anybody, he's a Byrnes. And you're Janet Blake, who works in his father's mill. Don't you see? Maybe he will take you out once or twice, and then he'll be off again somewhere, going out with the kind of girls — his own kind of girl. He'll never think of you again. When he falls in love, marries, it will be one of them. That's the way things are, and we can't change them." "Maybe I am his kind of girl," Janet said stubbornly. I shook my head. "No, darling. You're as sweet a girl as anyone could want — anyone who was born into the same kind of life as you, and lived in the same way. But Carl Byrnes hasn't. He'll want somebody who was brought up the way he was, and went away to school, and was taught how to manage a mansion like the one he lives in. Someone he can be proud of in front of his parents. Not a girl who's worked in his father's mill. And if you see him at all, you won't be able to forget him so easily." "I think you're wrong," Janet said. She slipped off the bed and went slowly to the door. "I don't think it's wrong to try to change things. Maybe if you want a thing hard enough you get it. Maybe I won't have to forget him." And so I had lost. It worried me terribly, all the rest of September and October. I had been wrong about one thing, anyway; Carl took Janet out much more than once or twice. By the end of October her chair at the dinner table was empty one or two nights during the week, and always on Saturday nights. She never volunteered to tell me where they went, or what they did, and of course I didn't ask her. She didn't talk much to the other girls, either; but she kept that glowing softness, and seemed to *•• PUT IT BACK IN YOUR POCKET » . . that money you were going to spend on something you don't really need! If you don't really need it, it's an inflation-making purchase, and not one American, if he really stopped to think about it, would do a solitary thing to make inflation a reality here. Inflation means danger — danger of the kind we had back in the days of the depression, the bread-line, soup-kitchen, apple-peddler days. So remember, don't buy above ceiling prices, don't buy rationed goods without surrendering ration stamps, and put that money back in your pocket until you reach a place where they sell war bonds — the really safe investment for a safe future in a safe America! -••• •••■ = •*•••