Larry’s enjoyment of that trip to Middletown was doubled when he found that Lucy was to accompany her father. He received another pleasant surprise when Mr. Howlitt placed ten dollars in two new, crisp bills, in his hands as soon as the load of farm products had been sold. “Do with it as you wish, lad,” he said, and Larry lost no time in hastening to a ready-made clothing store, where he bought a new suit of clothes, and even shoes and underwear. It took all of his money, and the outfit was a plain one, but serviceable, and it is safe to say that Larry will never buy another which will give him half the pleasure of that one. On his way home, and he started some time ahead of Mr. Howlitt and Lucy, as Old Jerry was a slow horse under ordinary circumstances, he could think of nothing else. Time and again he took up the bundle to examine it from the outside, and then tossed it back into the bottom of the wagon, saying over to himself: “It is mine!” Finally the idea entered his busy brain that it would be a fine thing to appear at home in his new suit. Why not put it on now? He was riding along a road where there was no house for a long distance, and he would risk meeting a team. Accordingly, almost before he realized what he was doing, he had stripped off his old coat, and never thinking in his wild exuberance of spirits that he might ever need to wear it again, flung it as far as he could into the bushes, crying out: “Lay there, old coat, and may you rest in peace!” Casting hasty glances up and down the road to see that no team was in sight, he sent one after another of his remaining garments into the bushes, until he stood in the wagon as unclothed as at the time of his birth! Anxious now to don his new suit he reached down in the wagon to take up the bundle, when to his horror he could not find it! It had been jostled out of the wagon and was gone! In the midst of this startling plight the sound of carriage wheels behind him caught his attention. Glancing wildly backward, he found that he was being followed by the last persons on earth that he would care to meet at that time--Pluto Snyder and Lucy Howlitt! CHAPTER XXII. A FOURTH OF JULY “ORATION.” It would be impossible to describe the dismay of Larry Little as he found that he was followed by Pluto Snyder and Lucy Howlitt, who was laughing and apparently enjoying herself. Fortunately for Larry, he had prudently ducked down behind the wagon seat at the same moment he had looked around at the sound of the approaching team. What could he do in that sorry plight? He cried out to Old Jerry, but he knew the clumsy farm horse would prove no match for the spirited animal driven by his rival. As if to add to his horror, the latter was driving at a smart gait, and he was rapidly overtaking him. In vain he urged Old Jerry on. He was in for it!