Once upon a time, in the pleasant village of Gilead, dwelt Mr. and Mrs. Stimpcett, with their four young children--Moses, Obadiah (called Obed), Deborah (called Orah), and little Cordelia. Mrs. Stimpcett, for money's sake, took a summer boarder, Mr. St. Clair, a city young man, who wished to behold the flowery fields, repose upon the dewy grass, and who had also another reason for coming, which will be told presently. On the morning after Mr. St. Clair's arrival, Mrs. Stimpcett said to grandma that, as the noise of four young children at once would be too much for a summer boarder until he should become used to it, Obed and Orah would go and spend the day with their grandfather's cousin, Mrs. Polly Slater. Mrs. Polly Slater lived all alone by herself in a cottage at another part of the village of Gilead. Obed was six and a half years old, and Orah nearly five. The two children set forth early in the morning. Orah wore her pink apron and starched sun-bonnet, and Obed wore his clean brown linen frock and trousers, the frock skirt standing out stiff like a paper fan. As his second best hat could not be found, and his first best was not to be thought of, he was obliged to wear his third best, which had a torn brim, and which he put on with tears and sniffles and loud complaints. It happened very curiously that as Obed and Orah were walking through the orchard, Obed still sniffling, they saw, under a bush, a beautiful smoking-cap. Obed quickly threw down his old hat, and put on the smoking-cap in a way that the loose part hung off behind. This beautiful smoking-cap belonged to the summer boarder, and was presented to him by a young lady who liked him very much. It was wrought in a Persian pattern slightly mingled with the Greek, and was embroidered with purple, yellow, crimson, Magenta, sage green, invisible blue, ecru, old gold, drab, and other shaded worsteds, dotted with stitches of shining silk and beads of silver, the tassel alone containing skeins of ecru sewing silk. The young lady lived not very far from Mr. Stimpcett's, and _she_ was that other reason why Mr. St. Clair became a summer boarder in the pleasant village of Gilead. Spry, the puppy dog, probably carried the smoking-cap to the orchard; but all that is known with certainty is that Mr. St. Clair, the evening before, then wearing the cap, reclined upon several chairs with his head out of the window, gazing at the moon, and there fell asleep, and that, as on account of the abundance of his hair it was a little too small, the cap fell off his head, and that when he awoke the pain in the back of his neck and the lateness of the hour caused him to forget all about it.