Read "Alice's Christmas-Tree" by Edward Everett Hale online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
After supper, accordingly, Pat Crehore repaired to certain rendezvous of the younger life of the neighborhood, known to him, in search of Bill Floyd. Bill was not at the first, nor at the second, there being indeed no rule or principle known to men or even to archangels by which Bill's presence at any particular spot at any particular time could be definitely stated. But Bill also, in his proud free-will, obeyed certain general laws; and accordingly Pat found him inspecting, as a volunteer officer of police, the hauling out and oiling of certain hose at the house of a neighboring hose company. "Come here, Bill. I got something to show you."
Bill had already carried home and put in safe keeping a copy of Routledge's "Robinson Crusoe," which had been given to him.