and literature were good, because he'd used them to study reading. He was
well into plane geometry and had a smattering of algebra, and there had
been a pause due to a parental argument as to the advisability of his
memorizing a table of six-place logarithms via the Holden machine.

Extra-curricularly, Jimmy Holden had acquired snippets, bits, and
wholesale chunks of a number of the arts and sciences and other
aggregations of information both pertinent and trivial for one reason
or another. As an instance, he had absorbed an entire bridge book by
Charles Goren just to provide a fourth to sit in with his parents and
Paul Brennan.

Consequently, James Holden had in data the education of a boy of about
sixteen, and in other respects, much more.

He escaped from the hospital simply because no one ever thought that a
five-year-old boy would have enough get-up-and-go to climb out of his
crib, rummage a nearby closet, dress himself, and then calmly walk out.
The clothing of a cocky teen-ager would have been impounded and his
behavior watched.

They did not miss him for hours. He went, taking the little
identification card from its frame at the foot of his bed--and that
ruined the correlation between tag and patient.

By the time an overworked nurse stopped to think and finally asked,
"Kitty, are you taking care of the little boy in Bed 6 over in 219?" and
received the answer, "No, aren't you?" Jimmy Holden was trudging up the
hill towards his home. Another hour went by with the two worried nurses
surreptitiously searching the rest of the hospital in the simple hope