Chance of a Lifetime by Grace Livingston Hill Page A

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