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 Summer by Edith Wharton.

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

Chapter 1

A girl came out of

Lawyer Royal's house

at the end of the one street

of North Dormer

and stood on the doorstep.

It was the beginning of a June afternoon.

The spring-like, transparent sky shed a rain of silver sunshine on the roofs of the village

and on the pastures and larchwards surrounding it.

A little wind moved among the round white clouds on the shoulders of the hills, driving their

shadows across the fields and down the grassy road that takes the name of street when it passes

through North Dormer. The place lies high and in the open and lacks the lavish shade of the

more protected New England villages. The clump of weeping willows about the duck pond and the Norway spruces in front of the hatchet gate

cast almost the only roadside shadow between Lawyer Royal's house and the point where,

...