Hollow City: The Second Novel of Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children

A man in a gray suit shoved past us to the window. He pushed money at the clerk, received a ticket in exchange, and hurried off toward the train.

“You said it was full!” Emma said, rapping hard on the glass. “You can’t do that!”

“That gentleman bought a first-class ticket,” the clerk said.

“Now be gone with you, pestilent little beggars! Go find pockets to pick somewhere else!”

Horace stepped to the ticket window and said, “Beggars, by definition, do not carry large sums of money,” and then he reached into his coat pocket and slapped a fat wad of bills down on the counter. “If it’s first-class tickets you’re selling, then that’s what we’ll have!”

The clerk sat up straight, gaping at the pile of money. The rest of us gaped too, baffled as to where Horace had gotten it. Riffling through the bills, the clerk said, “Why, this is enough to buy seats to an entire first-class car!”

“Then give us an entire car!” said Horace. “That way you can be sure we’ll pick no one’s pocket.”

The clerk turned red and stammered, “Y-yes sir—sorry, sir—and I hope you won’t take my previous comments as anything other than jest …”

“Just give us the blasted tickets so we can get on the train!”

“Right away, sir!”

The clerk slid a stack of first-class tickets toward us. “Enjoy your trip!” he said. “And please don’t tell anyone I said so, sirs and madams, but if I were you, I’d hide that bird out of sight. The conductors won’t like it, first-class tickets or not.”

As we strode away from the counter with tickets in hand, Horace’s chest puffed out like a peacock’s.

“Where on earth did you get all that money?” said Emma.

“I rescued it from Miss Peregrine’s dresser drawer before the house burned,” Horace replied. “Tailored a special pocket in my coat to keep it safe.”

“Horace, you’re a genius!” said Bronwyn.

“Would a real genius have given away every cent of our money like that?” said Enoch. “Did we really need an entire first-class car?”

“No,” said Horace, “but making that man look stupid felt good, didn’t it?”

“I suppose it did,” Enoch said.

“That’s because the true purpose of money is to manipulate others and make them feel lesser than you.”