“Just stepped in to see if you found anything more wrong, kid,” said Bill, giving a quick glance around at the safe and desk. “Find all your papers?”
Alan sprang to his feet and drew the officer in behind the desk, beginning to talk in quick, low tones. He told what Lancey had seen and of his visit to Mrs. Brower, showed the telegram, and gave a brief explanation about the mortgage and what happened.
Bill’s enigmatic face continued unchanged during the recital. Only his bright keen eyes studied the other’s face, and he nodded intelligently as the story went on.
“Judge Whiteley is fixing up the mortgage, all right. I’m going to pay off the other,” Alan finished, finding great relief in saying the words, his voice ringing with a soft triumph. “But I thought maybe you’d like to look over this guy that’s coming—if he comes.”
“I sure would!” said Bill dryly. “Suppose you just beat it out the back way, kid, and leave me in charge? Anybody else here? Joe? All right! Let him stay. He can look after the customers. Where is he? I’ll give him his orders. You beat it! Don’t go to your house, the guy might chase ya and try to annoy ya. I’ll tell ya. Go down and see that Washburn girl ya had out riding this morning. Nothing like a lady to make a good getaway behind. I’ll call ya there if I need ya. All righty now, run along.”
Something in Bill’s kindly tone stung Alan. He turned with a flash of fraternity in his eyes.
“Cut it, Bill. I’m not a quitter! I’ll stay here and face it out. I just thought you might like to look him over for future reference if he came.”
“I sure would!” said Bill fervently. “But I mean what I say. I’ll handle this. What you don’t say can’t do no harm, see? I’d like to get this guy unawares. You’re no quitter, of course, but in this case, it’s better to get outta sight, see? We may need this lad’s fingerprints. Remember we’ve had a burglary last night. The fact that he didn’t get away with much doesn’t cut any ice. We wanna catch that bird and keep an eye on him, and we can keep him less suspicious with you outta the way. Beat it, kid. Them’s orders!”
He slapped Alan on the back with a brotherly grin, and he could make no further protest.
Alan went out the back door of the store and walked slowly across the back lots and through the meadow till he came to the Washburns’s back fence, which he vaulted. Sherrill was out in the garden, picking red raspberries, and he joined her and began to help.
“Sherry, I’ve just had such a marvelous answer to prayer that it’s knocked me silly!” he said, as he stooped to pull off the coral globules and drop them into the china bowl she had given him.
Sherrill turned shining eyes upon him and began to laugh.
“Is that all the faith you had, Alan?” she asked. “It’s knocked you silly? Then why did you pray if you didn’t have any faith?”
“I don’t know!” said Alan sheepishly. “I was desperate. I’d reached the limit.”
“I read a little book the other day that said God has sometimes to bring us to the limit before He can get us to come to Him at all.”
“Well, I guess that’s right,” said the boy humbly. “I was just proud of the way I was going to handle my father’s business all alone. And then, when there came along something I couldn’t manage and didn’t know a thing to do, I was all up a tree. I didn’t think of praying till I got in a hole. I thought I could manage everything myself. I had no end of schemes for it, till they all failed flat. Then, when I prayed, the telephone rang the answer right in my ear. So I jumped, and several minor answers walked right into the store afterward. I mean it, Sherry! I’m astonished! I didn’t know answers to prayer ever came off the bat like that.”
“I think,” said Sherrill wisely, shaking her bowl to get more berries into it, “that God would probably give us answers like that every day if we lived close enough to Him so He could. Why, most of the time, I imagine we wouldn’t even hear the answers if He gave them; we keep so far away and so full of ourselves. But Alan”—her voice was soft, almost shy—”I have a feeling that God is opening up big things for you. I think you are growing a lot. I think He is leading you, getting you ready for some great work for Him, some place of power and influence for the kingdom.”
“Looks like it,” said Alan almost glumly, remembering suddenly, “leaving me here in this little hole of a town in a hardware store! Fat chance I’ve got to go get ready for anything. I’ve got to stick here and work. I’ve got to keep my dad’s business from going to pieces while he is laid by.”
“But beyond that already. It’s doing a lot in this town right now. What you’ve done for Bob Lincoln has made a lot of people see what Christ can do in a human life to change the natural man’s hates and enmities. The boys all feel that. I’ve heard some of them talking. And then, Alan, your influence is going to reach away, out to the desert in Egypt. It’s traveling there now, just as fast as the ship can take it. I shouldn’t wonder if you would find it would be even stronger for the kingdom than if you had gone yourself. I saw a look in Bob’s eyes, when he told me how you prayed with him, that made me sure he’s going to live up to what he promised.”
“Sherry!” said Alan. “You make me feel ashamed. Here I’ve been pitying myself because I couldn’t do a thing, and you talk like that. Say, Sherry, I wish you’d pray for me. 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. There was no sound but the snip of Grandmother’s scissors as she clipped off the thread from the napkins she was making out of a much-worn tablecloth.
Sherrill finished first and looked up, watching her mother’s face as she carefully turned her own letter back to the beginning and read it over.
“Well?” she asked at last, as her mother completed the last page for the second time and folded the letter in her lap, looking up. “Did you get one, too? Of course I can’t go, but what on earth do you suppose made him think of it? Who wrote yours? Not Uncle Weston, for I know his writing. You don’t mean to tell me that Aunt Eloise has broken the silence of years at last?”
The mother came back as from some sudden perplexity and turned her eyes on Sherrill.
“Really, dear, you ought not to speak that way of your aunt,” she reproved. “This letter is quite—well—kind, I think, and after all, we may have misjudged her. You know we don’t really know her at all.”
“Well, what is it all about, anyway?” asked Grandmother Sherrill impatiently. “Read out your letter, Sherrill. There is little enough to break the monotony.”
“Yes, read your letter,” said the mother with a smile. “Is it from your uncle?”
Sherrill read her letter.
My dear niece:
Your aunt and I want you to come and spend a few months in the city with us this winter. We think it is time that you and your cousin got acquainted and had some good times together.
We expect to be back from the shore early in November and shall expect you as soon as you can make your arrangements to come on. Your aunt is writing your mother so I will not go into details, for she will tell you all you need to know. I am enclosing my check to cover railroad expenses and hope that we shall be able to give you a good time.
Affectionately your uncle,
Weston Washburn
Sherrill crumpled the paper briskly in her fingers and looked up.
“Now read yours,” she said, “or rather, let me read it. For I’m morally certain you’ll leave out something or soften it down somehow, and I think I have a right to know the whole inwardness of this matter, even if it does show up that aunt of mine in a bad light.”
Laughing, she took possession of the other letter and began to read, while her mother, half smiling, half troubled, sat back in her seat and listened.
Dear Mary:
Weston thinks we ought to do something for Sherrill, so I am writing to say that she is invited to spend the winter with us and see a little of New York life. You do not need to trouble about getting her any new clothes, for Carol has plenty of things she isn’t using anymore that can be altered by my maid, and anyway you wouldn’t know what to get.
We expect to be back in New York on the eighteenth of November at the latest, and you can arrange for her to come to us at once. I am sure a winter in New York will be a great advantage to her, and if she is clever at all, she may be able to make valuable acquaintances and a good marriage.
As ever,
Eloise
There was something mocking and sharp in Sherrill’s voice as she finished reading the letter and folded it elaborately, putting it back into its envelope.
“Won’t that be nice?” she mocked. “Mother, wouldn’t you just love my making a good marriage? Lots of money, I suppose, and family, and all that! Anything that would lift this family out of obscurity and place it where it would not be a disgrace to her highness—”
“Sherrill! Don’t!” said her mother sharply. “You really mustn’t make fun of your aunt. Especially if you are going to accept her hospitality!”
“Her hospitality! My eye! You don’t for a minute suppose that it’s going to be her hospitality, do you? I’ll wager Uncle West had to lay down the law like a tyrant before he ever got all that letter out of her. But what do you suppose he did it for? Why did he want to do it?”
“My dear, he was your father’s twin brother. He was very much attached to him.”
“Then why didn’t he come across with something after Daddy died? When Keith was struggling to keep the business together and we couldn’t get security, why did he hedge out of everything?”
There was an almost bitter edge to Sherrill’s tone.
“I—don’t know—” answered Sherrill’ mother with a clouding of her sweet, serious eyes. “I have always thought—your aunt was a great expense just then. She had to have an operation, and she was used to everything that money could buy—and—well, I suppose he wasn’t as well off at that time as he is now. And I think he likely wants to make up for it.”
“You don’t mean you want me to go?” demanded Sherrill almost haughtily.
“Well, of course, you haven’t had as many advantages as if your father had lived,” said Sherrill’s mother wistfully. “I’ve always wanted you to get out in the world a little. I had expected, of course, that you would be able to go to college, just as your brother did.”
“Well,” said Sherrill a trifle bitterly, “New York isn’t college. I’m sure I don’t see just what I should get out of a winter in New York, especially as I don’t care for the clever marriage that Aunt Eloise expects me to pull off.”
Grandmother broke into the silence that followed, in a tone of amused soliloquy. “ ‘As ever,’ “ she murmured, with a musical little chuckle. “ ‘As ever, Eloise.’ She need not have said that. We know she’s just what she always was. Yes, she’ll never change. She’ll always be Eloise. Wanting to dominate everything and everybody. Wanting John Washburn’s child to wear Carol’s old castoffs! As if Sherrill wasn’t every bit as good as her Carol. As if the Sherrills weren’t the finest old family anywhere around this neighborhood! And who was she to set up to snub them? She, the daughter of a corner grocery man.”
“Oh, Mother, you mustn’t put such ideas into Sherrill’s head. It will be hard enough for her anyway, if she goes—”
“If she goes!” snorted Grandmother Sherrill. “You don’t mean to say, Mary Sherrill, that you mean to let her go? Let her be a target for that selfish, pig-eyed woman to shoot at, let her be a background for that precious little flapper of a barelegged Carol! You know what Rebecca Harlow said when she got back from the shore last week. She said she didn’t wear a stocking, just sandals, all around the streets, and her bathing suit was scandalous.”
“Mother! Don’t! I haven’t said Sherrill was to go, have I? Sherrill is the one to decide. She is the one who received the invitation, and she is old enough to settle it herself. She certainly wouldn’t have to go without stockings because her younger cousin does. I’m not sure at all what Sherrill ought to do. I somehow feel that perhaps her father would have wanted her to go. After all, Weston is her uncle, and she does owe something to her father’s family.”
“And you would let her go and wear cast-off clothes and be on charity?”
“Certainly not!” said Mrs. Washburn, rising and going toward the sewing machine. “If Sherrill goes, she will be able somehow to get the right clothes to wear. We have always been decently clothed.”
“Humph!” the grandmother sneered with elderly wisdom. “I guess you’ll find out Eloise Washburn won’t care for the clothes you make. She says as much in that letter. She doesn’t want you to bring anything! She says you wouldn’t know what was suitable.”
That was the beginning of the week’s discussion.
When Keith Washburn came home and was told the news, and read the two letters, he said with a sensible, elderly brother’s farsightedness, “Well, I think she ought to go. If for nothing else than to show her aunt and cousin—yes, and uncle, too—that New York isn’t the last word in decency and culture and education. My sister can hold her own anywhere, if she wants to, and I’d like Uncle West to know it. As for Aunt Eloise and Carol, why bother about them? They’re only human beings, and can’t really do much. Sherrill needn’t have much to do with them if she finds them unpleasant. She’ll make her own place in the household, and she can surely get on with anybody for six months. I’d like her to be in New York and hear some good concerts and lectures and meet some nice people, and see the sights. It’s an education, a visit like that, even if your relatives aren’t all that you wish they were. Uncle Weston seems to be asking in good faith, why not accept in the same way, and try it out, at least? If things aren’t pleasant, you can always come home, but it is foolish to turn it down flat; and besides, I don’t think Dad would have liked it. He always thought a lot of his brother and wanted us to overlook Aunt Eloise’s snubbing for his sake. Really, Sherry, I’m glad you got this invitation. I’ve been hoping to get on my feet before long so that I might send you somewhere to get a little glimpse into another kind of life. But it doesn’t look as if I’d be able to do it for two or three more years yet, so I hope you see your way clear to take this, now that it has come, and get what you can out of it till I can do better for you.”