uped with the
wicked as more to be pitied than hated, then whom would one hate?

Did knowing--seeing--spoil hating? And was all hating to go when
all men saw?

At the last minute she had a fight with herself to keep from going back
and refunding the missionary money! The missionary money worried Katie.
She wanted it paid back. But she saw that it was not her paying it back
would satisfy her. She even felt that she had no right to pay it back.

CHAPTER XXX

She returned to Chicago to find that her uncle was in town. He had left a
message asking her to join him for dinner over at his hotel.

It was pleasant to be dining with her uncle that night. The best
possible antidote she could think of for Ann's father was her dear uncle
the Bishop.

As she watched him ordering their excellent dinner she wondered what he
would think of Ann's father. She could hear him calling Centralia a
God-forsaken spot and Ann's father a benighted fossil. Doubtless he would
speak of the Reverend Saunders as a type fast becoming obsolete. "And the
quicker the better," she could hear him add.

But she fancied that the Reverend Saunderses of the world had yet a long
course to run in the Centralias of the world. She feared that many Anns
had yet to go down before them.

At any rate, her uncle was not that. To-night Katie loved him anew for
his delightful worldliness.

Though he was not in his best form that night. He was on his way out to
Colorado for the marriage of his son. "There was no doing anything about
it," he said with a sigh. "My office has made me enough the diplomat,
Katherine, to know when to quit trying. So I'm going out there--fearful
trip--why it's miles from Denver--to do all I can to respectablize the
affair. It seemed to me a trifle inconsiderate--in view of the effort
I'm making--that they could not have waited until next month; there are
things calling me to Denver then. Now what shall I do there all that
time?--though I may run on to California. But it seems my daughter-in-law
would have her honeymoon in the mountains while the aspens are just a
certain yellow she's fond of. So of course"--with his little shrug Katie
loved--"what's my having a month on my hands?"

"Well, uncle, dear uncle," she laughed, "hast forgotten the days when
nothing mattered so much as having the leaves the right shade of yellow?"

"I have not--and trust I never will," he replied, with a touch of
asperity; "but I feel that Fred has s