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enough money. “How will I get there?”
    “We'll find a way,” said Myrtle. “Let's go to the train station and see what we can figure out.”
    “But what about your school?” Violet persisted. She couldn't believe Myrtle was just going to wander away.
    “It isn't a school,” said Myrtle testily. “It's a training institute. A school would be a place where you learnedstuff from books so that you could do something important in the world. My mama sent me to a school when she was alive. She didn't want me to go to someplace where we study ironing and dusting and knowing our place. Mama didn't mean for me to know my place.”
    Myrtle had started out this speech sounding cranky, but at the end there was a dangerous squeak in her voice, and Violet was afraid she was going to start crying. She never knew what to do when people started crying. Fortunately, Myrtle didn't.
    “Come on,” Myrtle said. “Let's go to the train station.”

Hobie and the Brakeman
    T HEY WOULD NEVER HAVE GOTTEN TO W ASH- ington if Hobie the Hobo hadn't shown them how to frisk a head-end blind. He was about Violet's age, she was sure. He wore knee britches and the same sort of ankle-high black boots that Myrtle and Violet had, but his face wore a studied expression of world-weariness that made him look at least forty. He had a plug of tobacco fixed firmly in his left cheek and talked around it in fluent hobo slang.
    “You Angelinas lookin' to catch a blind?” he said as Violet and Myrtle stood on the platform in Penn Station, wondering what their chances were of boarding a train without tickets and not being caught.
    “What?” said Myrtle.
    “Are you blind baggage?” he said.
    “Er, I don't think so,” said Violet firmly, in an attempt to end the conversation. Hobie looked exactly like the Wrong Sort of People that her mother was always talking about.
    “Too bad. You should be, if you want to make the miles. Hopping the freights is for rubes,” said the boy. “Too slow—even if you get on a five-hundred-miler, who wants to spend all their time on the drag line? And you can get your legs sliced off riding the rods. You gotta ride the blinds, you wanna make any miles.”
    Violet moved away, but to her distress, Myrtle was looking at the boy with interest. “Can you get us onto a train?” Myrtle said.
    “Thought you'd never ask, Angelina. Name's Hobie. Hobie the Hobo.” He extended his hand.
    Myrtle shook it. Then he stuck his hand at Violet. She wanted nothing to do with this boy, but she was too polite not to take his hand and shake it. His hand felt rough and callused.
    “A lot of the brothers and sisters of the road won't come into the Big Burg,” Hobie said. “Too many bulls in New York. But it ain't hard if you stay away from the freight yards and know how to catch a blind.”
    “We need to get to Washington,” said Myrtle. “Can you show us how?”
    “Washington.” Hobie swept his hair back from his forehead and rocked back on his heels, thinking. “Gonnacatch the Bum's Own, then the Ma and Pa. Those are railroads,” he added. “Gonna change in Philly and Baltimore. Stay off the hot boxes unless you can catch a hot-shot.… Aw, you Angelinas don't know anything about riding the rails, do you?”
    “No, nothing,” said Myrtle.
    But it soon became clear that Hobie knew everything, at least about hoboing, and he intended to tell it to them. As he talked, Violet drew Myrtle aside and tried to whisper that they needed to lose Hobie, quickly.
    Myrtle wouldn't even let her start. “He's going to help us,” she said, shrugging Violet away.
    Violet was annoyed. She didn't want to be thought a coward. She liked that Myrtle was a person who was willing to just take off and do something, like leave her school—institute—and go to Washington. It reminded her a little of Flossie, who was always ready to try something new without a whole lot of discussion and worrying and planning. Violet wondered if she'd changed so much