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You're built to win it. Welcome to Snooze Cast. The podcast is on. To help you, fall fall asleep. Find us at snoozecast.com and if you enjoy our show, please share us with a friend. This episode is brought to you by Moon Shiny Dreams. Tonight, we'll read about the love between a kennel maid who is betrothed to a confirmed bachelor. It comes from the opening to the 1928 novel by Eden Philpott's titled Children of Men. Philpott's was an English author who maintained a steady output of more than three books a year for half a century. Many of his novels were about moral life, eating as best known as the author, of many novels, plays, and poems about Dartmoor. His Dartmoor cycle of 18 novels and two volumes of short stories still has

many avid readers, despite the fact that many titles were out of print. Let's get cozy.

Close your eyes. Relax your body into the softness of your pen. Now, take a few deep breaths. On a day in high summer, the valley was full of light, and on a river her more land journey ended, bowed under a plantation of pine and fur, then sparkled forth to learn what welcome awaited her in the lower lands. the stream, Easterly, a green hill towered against the sky. Stunted thorns broke the sweep of the Eagle Furn. Grey rock clitters spread, and cloud shadows drifted over all, to cool the brightness.

A woodmast beneath in the mouth of the veil, and from this dusky retreat, there leapt the river in a succession of planes broken at each little fall by an apron of granite. Here the ripples flashed with foam. Here the blue of the sky was caught in the gliding surface between where honors trusses twined soberly, and fern,

Heather would rush cast their reflections into our tremorous mirror. Two stone shelves presently barred the waterway, and leaping one, the river made a circular sweep above the second and eddyed in a little backwater. The later ledge was gentle and its steps sloped to three feet above the stream.

It was fringed with herbitch and flowers, and here, on a loitered, making shadows for fingering trout to play in. Through the limpid crystal, their shone, agate, and amber tones of rock and pebble beneath, and these warm colors were repeated in the tunic, breaches and gators of a girl who sat above the pool. Round her thronged dozen lesser lives, that woven restless, ruddy pattern about her feet, in her lap and upon her shoulders. Girl and puppies completed the harmony and made a splash of rich, obbernolite beside the river. The Irish terriers kept on the move about their kennelmaid and seemed to flow over her as the stream flowed over the stones. They nuzzled her cheeks, licked her fingers, thrust their noses into the black hair coiled up under her cap. She was a slim brown girl with grey eyes that seemed large for her small features. She was tall and slim. She laughed and played with the puppies, but a deeper joy than they could give lighted her face. Leave me alone, my chicks. She said and pushed them away from her with both hands. They scattered, tugging and tumbling. Then, while the girl tidied her hair and stilled her laughter, the puppies set up their infant barking, and she knew that somebody must be upon the byroad that ran parallel with the stream.

She rose, jumped over the narrow neck of the pool and joined the man who was coming up the valley. The puppies already swarmed round his heels. Could you get it? She asked, and the man held up a large tin. Just in time, he answered. They were starting off with the cream to Brent, but Mr. Winter spared me a pound.

Are they settling in pretty clever?

Yes. off with the cream to Brent, but Mr. Winter spared me a pound. Are they settling in pretty clever? Yes, they're getting straight. Jacob Bullstone stood half a foot taller than the young woman. Now a great thing had happened to him, and at thirty-five, one whom his neighbors declared would remain a bachelor, was in love with his kennelmaid, and engaged, to be married. He owned varied possessions, and, thanks to an industrious and prosperous father, some fortune. Two farms were his property, and the lap of Agburo Beacon at the foothills of the Moor a few miles from his home. While here, beside the river behind the Pinewood, he dwelt with his widowed mother and pursued the business dearest to his own heart. Bullstone bred a famous strain of red Irish terriers and sustained the reputation that his father had won before him.

He was a man of good education, great energy, and high principle, and he lived in narrow life. He had never roamed, but found his intelligence and spirit of inquiry, satisfied in his native environment of more and veil. He did not guess that his outlook was limited, for he had been educated at a grammar school and thought himself to possess clearer wits than most of his neighbors. The fact, together with his prosperity, made him satisfied with his own accomplishments and wits. His old mother did nothing to modify his self-judgment, but not never found the man unfriendly or puffed up for he was of a kindly generous disposition, did good things, and held it no fault in another to differ from his own opinions. Love, however, opened a Jacob's mind to a lack in himself that he had not suspected. He still felt timid and distrustful before the depths of ignorance revealed by his own new emotions. In person, Jacob Bullstone was large and heavily mondled with broad shoulders and a clean cut swarly face. His eyes were dark brown and of a sulky cast in repose, but the expression blinded him. He had a low wide forehead, a square jaw, and heavy chin. He shaved clean, and his mouth was large and well-shaped. He kept his black hair so short, but the lines of his skull were clearly seen.

It sloped rather steeply backward from the brow and bowled to little above his small ears. He was atlas and clad in tawny tweeds with black leggings and a dirty red waistcoat. He walked with a long stride that he was now taming to go with Marjorie Huxim's footsteps, and for adornment he wore his father's gold-signant ring on the little finger of his left hand and the silver mask of a fox in his green tie. The lovers proceeded to gather deep in their own concerns, for they had been betrothed a week. The startling news was known at Marjorie's home in Brent, four miles away down the valley. And today, her parents and her brother were coming to the canals, that they might dine with Mr. Bullstone and his mother. The cream from Shipley Farm was for them. Marjorie Huxum had turned Kennell made for love of the life and not because any reason existed that she should earn her own living. Barlow Huxum, her father, kept the post office at Brent as an addition to his own prosperous drapery establishment. He had but two children living, and Marjorie, who adorned dogs and understood them, came to Red House, Jacob Bullstone's home, that she might fill the vacancy until he should be suited with a new assistant. The families were long acquainted and Mr. Hawksum, little dreaming that such a great matter would spring from the incident raised no objection to his daughter's wish. She came for a fortnight in friendship, but liked the work so well that she presently proposed to stop on at a salary. And since she had proved herself skilled and had won the affection of old Mrs. Bullstone and Jacob's head cattleman, he was glad to secure her. Her parents, however, protested, and after six months began to agitate for the return of their only daughter. But when Judith Huxum demanded that Marjorie should come home again, the dog breeder had discovered that his future happiness depended upon her. Their courting at first, almost unconscious, proceeded quickly. Four men and women were of a mind, and though a gap of some years separated them, circumstances combined to diminish this disparity. the girl had been bred in a puritanical home under a strenuous mother who regarded happiness at best as doubtful. Marjorie loved him very heartily before he had given a gleam that he was also in love. But her emotion had been of a gentle pattern and thrust away with secret blushes as something near akin to wickedness. She felt a gulf was fixed between such an important well to do man and her young self. Indeed, she did not even suffer, but rather laughed at herself for her moon-shiny dreams. Then came the evidence from the other side, and she was overwhelmed to find her power over one regarded as unyielding before women. He approached her with humility, declared genuine pride and satisfaction on the discovery of their love, and and instantly acquainted her parents with the fact that she had consented to wed him. Barlow Huxham declared gratification, but his wife was not so well pleased. The match, while in every respect a brilliant one, and beyond what they might have hoped for, found her mother in some doubt, she suspected that fifteen years was too great a difference of age, and she professed, uncertainly, concerning the past life of a bachelor of thirty-five. should not not know anything against Pulse Stone or his parents before him. She could not name the quality of her suspicions, yet she questioned Marjorie very closely and warned her of the step that she designed, but no permanent cloud appeared, and Jacob conducted himself in a manner to disarm Mrs. Hawksham. For his views of matrimony satisfied her, and he proposed a settlement that could only be regarded as generous. In this matter, however, Barlo Huxam was not behind his future son-in-law. Twice on Sundays, the lover of brought Marjorie to her family, and twice he worshipped with them at their tabernacle. His behavior was agreeable to Mrs. Huxam, and her doubts finally dwindled. Today, while Marjorie and Jacob walked side by side towards Red House, nestling under a shoulder of the hill behind the pine woods, the girls' parents and her brother were already upon their way, trampling through shady lanes, upward through the valley to Shipley Bridge. They passed through the woods with the puppies galloping round about, and then they came to the stone-built home of the bullstones, a granite house under red tiles, which covered the upper story of the walls also. It basked under the hot sun in a hollow notch of black tour, while the river ran at its feet and a grass-lawn spread before the windows. Above on the hillside were scooped terraces where grew cabbage and turnip and beyond and spraying the trees to the Hillcrest, Westerly. Laurel and Rhododendron made the slope snug. The kennels extended behind the house, house while bullstones property spread to the other side of the river also, and there an acre or two had been cleared, where potatoes grew. Fowls and ducks flourished at streamside, and the link between Red House and the outlying cultivation was a bridge of pine logs thrown across Anna, where her banks rose high. Everything about the place was neat, trim and stern. The hedges were clipped, the ground clean. For Jacob Bullstone's mother was an old-fashioned woman and had lived with a husband inspired by the same ideas. The highest beauty be tidiness.

Mrs. Bullstone never worried of declaring,

and her son was content to echo that opinion.

His home and its surroundings proclaimed the distinction of use,

but none other. There were no flower beds, no attempt to decorate house, garden, or river. Indeed, Anna was chasened by stone-built banks until she passed southerly away to the rocks and rapids and the deep mossy pools where Red House ducks and geese spent their pleasantest hours. Nature strove with man, but man conquered for a little space. Jacob conducted the puppies to their quarters and Marjorie entered the home. Behind the house was a large exercise yard with open compartments wired off round about it, a boiler house for the preparation of food, and various buildings on two sides of the square. The red mothers of the puppies welcomed them back, and the little things knew their parents well. Separated dogs barked to Jacob from enclosures and pressed their noses through the bars. But all were of the same breed, and to an untrained eye exactly resembled each other.

Jacob accosted a few, then turned to a man who was mixing food. The goats are gone up shiply tour, he said.

For goats were a feature of the establishment. A little flock was capped, since goats milk and bullstones opinion was the primest food for newborn dogs. Barton Gill, though bald and wrinkled, was not so old as he looked. As a lad, he had worked for Jacob's father, and was now little more than 50, though he appeared to be nearer 70. He was slow of voice and gesture, but still was strong and hearty behind his wrinkles and somewhat pessimistic view of life. A mile away walked slowly Barlow Huxam and his wife, while Jeremy, their son, a lad of fifteen, loitered behind them. To play and fling stones, but he kept his parents in sight. Mr. Hawksham, a solid fair man of five and forty,

moped his brow and declared that he must rest and grow cooler before proceeding. Judith Huxam, a daughter of the prosperous race of the pulley-blanks, was the same age as her husband. A dark haired,

neat woman was she, who put folk in mind of a bento man. Always trim, alert, and self-possessed, Her voice, character marked her face, voice and opinions.

She was pious, with the piety of a generation now vanishing away, and also very proud. But she had the instinct to hide much of herself from the world, being seldom in her neighbor's houses,

...