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.

Now when Obed and Orah arrived at Mrs. Polly Slater's, they found her
doors shut and locked. Mr. Furlong, the man who lived in the next house,
called out to them, "Mrs. Polly Slater has borrowed a horse and cart,
and gone to mill; she will stay and eat dinner with your aunt Debby."
Then he added, "I am harnessing my horse to go to mill; how would you
like to go with me, and ride back with Mrs. Polly Slater in the
afternoon?"

Obed and Orah liked this so much that they ran and clambered into the
cart as fast as they could, Orah climbing in over the spokes of a wheel.
Mr. Furlong fastened Obed's cap on by tying around it a stout