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 read a short story by Edith Wharton,

Roman Fever.

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

1.

From the table at which they had been lunching, two American ladies of ripe but well cared for

middle age, moved across the lofty terrace of the Roman restaurant, and leaning on its parapet,

looked first at each other, and then down on the outspread glories of the Palatine and

the forum, with the same expression of vague but benevolent approval.

As they leaned there, a girlish voice echoed up gaily from the stairs leading to the court below.

"'I'll come along then,' it cried, not to them, but to an invisible companion,

"'and let's leave the young things

do their knitting. And a voice is fresh laughed back, oh look here babs, not actually knitting.

Well, I mean figuratively, rejoined the first. After all, we haven't left our poor parents much

else to do. And at that point the turn of the

stairs engulfed the dialogue.

The two ladies looked at each other again, this time with a tinge of smiling embarrassment,

...