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 of the stressful day behind you and drift off to sleep.

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Tonight, I will be reading a story by George MacDonald.

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

No house of any pretension to be called a palace

is in the least worthy of the name, except it has a wood-nared,

very near it, and the nearer the better.

Not all round it, I don't mean that,

for a palace ought to be open to the sun and wind and stand high and brave, with weathercocks glittering and flags flying, but on one side of every palace there must be a wood.

And there was a very grand wood indeed beside the palace of the king, who was going to be

Daylight's father, such a grand wood that nobody yet had ever got to the other end of it.

Near the house it was kept very trim and nice, and it was free of brushwood for a long way

in.

But by degrees it got wild, and it grew wilder and wilder and wilder, until some said wild beasts

at last did what they liked in it.

The king and his courtiers often hunted, however, and this kept the wild beasts

far away from the palace. One glorious summer morning, when the wind and the sun were out

together, when the veins were flashing and the flags frolicking against the blue sky,

...