Jimmy Holden had with him only his clothing and what was left of the wad
of paper money from his father's cashbox still pinned to the inside of
his shirt.

This time Jimmy did not ride in style. Burlap sacks covered him when
night fell; they dirtied his clothing and the bottom of the freight car
scuffed his shoes. For eighteen hours he hid in the jolting darkness, not
knowing and caring less where he was going, so long as it was away!

He was hungry and thirsty by the time the train first began to slow down.
It was morning--somewhere. Jimmy looked furtively out of the slit at the
edge of the door to see that the train was passing through a region of
cottages dusted black by smoke, through areas of warehouse and factory,
through squalor and filth and slum; and vacant lots where the spread of
the blight area had been so fast that the outward improvement had not
time to build. Eventually the scene changed to solid areas of railroad
track, and the trains parked there thickened until he could no longer
see the city through them.

Ultimately the train stopped long enough for Jimmy to squeeze out through
the slit at the edge of the door.

The train went on and Jimmy was alone in the middle of some huge city.
He walked the noisome sidewalk trying to decide what he should do next.
Food was of high importance, but how could he get it without attracting
attention to himself? He did not know. But finally he reasoned that a
hot dog wagon would probably take cash from a youngster without asking
embarrassing questions, so long as the cash wasn't anything larger than
a five-dollar bill.

He entered the next one he came to. It was dirty; the windows held
several years' accumulation of cooking grease, but the aroma was terrific
to a young animal who'd been without food since yesterday afternoon.

The counterman did not like kids, but he put away his dislike at the
sight of Jimmy's money. He grunted when Jimmy requested a dog, tossed one
on the grill and went back to reading his newspaper until some inner
sense told him it was cooked. Jimmy finished it still hungry and asked
for another. He finished a third and washed down the whole mass with a
tall glass of highly watered orange juice. The counterman took his money
and was very careful about making the right change; if this dirty kid had
swiped the five-spot, it could be the counterman's problem of explaining
to someone why he had overcharged. Jimmy's intelligence told him that
c