Free Westlake, Donald E - Novel 25 by Philip (v1.1)

               Philip lived in a huge apartment house. It was
taller than a spaceship and wider than a movie theater and it had more windows
than you could count if you counted all day.
                   Out in front of this apartment house there was
one skinny tree and a long canopy and a large doorman named Mister Neep. Mister
Neep wore a bright blue uniform with shiny buttons on it. He also wore a bright
blue hat with gold trim of which he was very proud.
                   All along the block there were other apartment
houses just like the one Philip lived in. Way down at the corner there was a
board fence around a deep hole in the ground. Big machines and husky men were
building a brand new apartment house there.
                   Standing in front of the apartment houses were
doormen just like Mister Neep, except that none of them were quite as big or
quite as shiny as Mister Neep.
                   Philip liked Mister Neep because he was the
biggest and shiniest doorman on the whole block.
                   The apartment where Philip and his mother and
father lived was on the seventh floor. There was a big living room. There was a
kitchen with a little corner where the family ate breakfast. There was a
bathroom with white tiles. There was a large bedroom where Philip's mother and
father slept. And there was a not-quite-so-large bedroom where Philip slept.
                  

 
                   And besides all this there was a terrace, which
was like a front porch way up on the side of the building. From the terrace
Philip could see lots of other buildings in the city, all of them full of
apartments very much like his.
                   On the kitchen wall there was a round thing
called a speaker, which Mister Neep used when he wanted to tell Philip's mother
something. One day, as Philip sat at the kitchen table licking out a bowl,
there was a buzzing noise from the speaker. That was Mister Neep's signal.
                 

 
                  Philip's mother went over to the speaker and
said, "Yes, Mister Neep?"
                   Mister Neep's voice said, "There's a
package down here, just delivered."
                   Philip's mother said, "What sort of
package, Mister Neep?"
                   Mister Neep said, "It's a package for
Philip. Has his name on it. I daresay it's a present."
                   Philip said, "I heard that."
                   "Trust you," said his mother. To
Mister Neep she said, "We'll be right down."
                   Philip and his mother rode down in the
elevator. There by the front door stood Mister Neep, with the package in his
hands.
                   "Do you suppose," Mister Neep said
to Philip, "do you suppose you could carry this package upstairs
yourself?"
                   "Sure I could," said Philip.
                   So Mister Neep handed him the package. It was
much heavier than Philip expected. He and his mother went back upstairs.
                   "You'd better open it on the kitchen
table," Philip's mother said, "so we won't have a mess
anywhere."
                   Philip opened the package completely by
himself. It took longer than he had thought it would. When he had it open at
last he discovered that inside the package there was . . . a truck. A very large, a very beautiful, a very complicated truck. It
had batteries in it, and it had lots of space for carrying things, and it had a
big scoop on the top that could reach down and pick up a whole gob of dirt and
dump it into the back of the truck, and it had a button you could push to make
the back of the truck lift up and dump the dirt out again.
                  

 
                   It was the most beautiful and useful truck
Philip had ever seen.
                   There was