I’ve got some big problems to face, and I’m just finding out what a fool I am.”

“I have been praying,” said Sherrill softly. “I’ve prayed all the morning.”

“H’m!” said Alan thoughtfully. “So that’s why that answer came so quick. I thought it couldn’t be just my prayers. ‘If two of you shall agree—’ But we didn’t even agree. Sherry, it was wonderful. I can’t get over it yet.”

“For shame, Alan. You’ve just the same promises to go on that I have, or anybody else, and you’ve just the same God—”

The telephone rang wildly in the house, and Sherrill ran to answer it, for her mother was out and her grandmother was taking a nap.

Alan picked the berries thoughtfully, and in a moment Sherrill called him from the door.

“It’s you they want, Alan,” she called.

Alan went in and heard Bill’s voice. “It’s all over, Mac,” he said. “All but the shoutin’. Very obliging guy he was, Mac, tough as they make ‘em, but he gave me some nice fingerprints in a convenient place—course, he wasn’t aware he was doing it—and his autograph on a note to you, together with a telephone number where he said you could call the Rawlins bird.

“Course, you see, I’d had Joe tell him you wouldn’t treat with nobody but Rawlins hisself, see? You’d left that word, you know. And then I give him the p’lice headquarters’ private number where he could call you, see? Told him it was a private wire if he wanted to get you direct. But when he calls, if that bird has the nerve to call, he’ll talk with me, see? We’ve gotta sift this matter, and I guess we’ve got some good dope now. I’m getting a man I know in the city force, and putting him wise, also, so if there’s any more funny business, we’ll know how to act.”

Alan stayed to supper at the Washburns’s, and helped eat some of the red raspberries with cream and angel cake, and other good things. Afterward, they sat in the hammock and talked more about prayer and how it changes things, about the young people in their church group whom they would pray for.

“I wonder,” said Alan as he took his leave finally, “if we were meant to live this way every day, praying for things and expecting them? And getting them in startling ways, sometimes.”

“Of course,” said Sherrill, “and not getting them sometimes, when God sees it’s not best. I heard a dear, wonderful man from Germany, who talked at our Bible conference this spring, say that God had different ways of answering prayer. He said the very lowest answer was ‘Yes,’ that a higher answer was ‘Wait,’ and God gave it to those who could trust Him more. He said that, sometimes, to those who could trust Him most, He could give the answer of ‘No.’ “

“Sherry, that’s not why He said no to me about going to the desert. I’ve never trusted Him like that,” he said slowly. “But I’d like to. It would be a wonderful way of living.”

“I think He’s going to trust you that way, Alan, from now on. I’m sure He had some beautiful, wonderful reason for keeping you home from the desert.”

Chapter 6

Sherrill Washburn turned from the door with her hands full of letters that the postman had just brought, and shuffled them deftly over.

One for Grandma Sherrill with the address of her weekly religious paper in the upper left-hand corner. That would be the yearly reminder that the subscription was due.

Two for Mother, the square one from Cousin Euphrasia, who was a shut-in and depended on Mother for her personal touch with the outside world. The long one would be an acknowledgment of the yearly report Mother, as secretary of the Church Missionary Society, had recently sent in.

A sheaf of receipted bills, a letter from a far western investment that had practically become valueless, yet from time to time gave out hope that it might revive and still be worth paying its taxes. How well each of the often-recurring letters was known in the family’s life! How Sherrill longed for something new and exciting, just as she had longed for the last five years, ever since she had begun to grow up and be impatient for real living to begin.

This time, however, there were two other letters at the bottom of the heap, both with a New York postmark. Sherrill hastened her step out of the darkness of the hall, back into the living room where her mother and grandmother sat sewing.

“Two real letters at last,” she announced cheerfully to her mother, “one for you and one for me, and I believe mine is from Uncle West. What in the world do you suppose he is writing to me for? It isn’t my birthday or Christmas and he writes to send me a check to buy my present.”

“Read it and see,” said Grandmother Sherrill hungrily. She had already opened her meager communication and laid it in her work basket disappointedly. There was another grandchild living out in the world who might have written to her. She was always hoping, although she had long ago begun to realize that modern youth has little time for grandmothers.

The room was very still for a minute or two, while mother and daughter read their letters.