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 Grant Allen,

The Adventure of the Cantankerous Old Lady.

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

On the day when I found myself with the tuppins in my pocket, I naturally made up my mind

to go around the world.

It was my stepfather's death that drove me to it. I'd never seen

my stepfather. Indeed, I never even thought of him as anything more than a Colonel Watts Morgan.

I owed him nothing except my poverty. He married my dear mother when I was a girl at school in Switzerland, and he proceeded

to spend her little fortune, left at her sole disposal by my father's will, and paying his

gambling debts. After that, he carried my dear mother off to Burma, and when he and the climate

between them succeeded in killing her, he made up for

his appropriations at the cheapest rate by allowing me just enough to send me to Gerton.

So when the colonel died in the year I was leaving college, I did not think it necessary to go

into mourning for him, especially as he chose the precise moment

when my allowance was due and bequeathed me nothing but his consolidated liabilities.

Of course, you will teach, said Elsie Petheridge, when I explained my affairs to her.

...