Good evening. Welcome to the Just Sleep podcast. I'm Tasha, your host.

Every week, I will read you an old story to help you relax, put the stressful day behind you, and drift off to sleep.

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Tonight, I'm reading a short story by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman,

a New England nun.

So lie down, close your eyes, and let me read you a story.

It was late in the afternoon and the light was waning.

There was a difference in the look of the tree shadows out in the yard.

Somewhere in the distance cows were lowing and a little bell was tinkling.

Now and then a farm wagon tilted by, and the dust flew.

Some blue-shirted labourers with shovels over their shoulders plodded past.

Little swarms of flies were dancing up and down before the faces of people in the soft air.

There seemed to be a gentle stir arising over everything for the mere sake of subsidence.

A very premonition of rest and hush and night.

This soft diurnal commotion was over Louisa Ellis also.

She had been peacefully sewing at her sitting-room window all afternoon.

Now she quilted her needle carefully into her work,

which she folded precisely, and laid in a basket with her thimble

and thread and scissors. Louisa Ellis could not remember that ever in her life she had mislaid

...