Good evening. Welcome to the Just Sleep podcast. I'm Tasia, 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 will be reading Kipps by H.G. Wells.

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

Chapter 1 The Little Shop at New Romney

1

Until he was nearly arrived at adolescence.

It did not become clear to Kipps

how it was that he was under the care

of an aunt and uncle instead of having a father and mother like other boys. Yet he had vague

memories of a somewhere else that was not New Romney, of a dim room, a window looking down on

white buildings, and of a someone else who talked to forgotten

people, and who was his mother. He could not recall her features very distinctly, but he remembered,

with extreme definition, a white dress she wore, with a pattern of a little sprigs of flowers

and little bows of ribbon upon it,

and a girdle of straight-ribbed white ribbon about the waist.

Linked with this, he knew not how, were clouded, half-obliterated recollections of scenes

...