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 The Blue Castle by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

So lie down, close your eyes and let me read you a story. Chapter 1 If it had not rained on a certain May morning, Valency Sterling's whole life

would have been entirely different. She would have gone, with the rest of her clan,

to Aunt Wellington's engagement picnic, and Dr. Trent would have gone to Montreal.

But it did rain, and you shall hear what happened to her because of it.

Valancy weakened early in the lifeless, hopeless hour just preceding dawn.

She had not slept very well.

One does not sleep well sometimes when one is 29 on the morrow,

and unmarried, in a community and connection where the unmarried are simply those who have failed

to get a man. Dairwood and the Sterlings had long since relegated Valency to hopeless old

maidenhood. But Valency to hopeless old maidenhood.

But Valency herself had never quite relinquished, a certain pitiful, shamed little hope

that romance would come her way yet. Never, until this wet, horrible morning, when she

wakened to the fact that she was twenty-nine, an unsought by any

man. Ah, there lay the sting. Valency did not mind so much being an old maid. After all,

...