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 Magic Shop, a short story by H. G. Wells.

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

I had seen the magic shop from afar several times.

I had passed it once or twice.

A shop window of alluring little objects.

Magic balls, magic hens, wonderful cones, ventrilochist dolls, the material of the

basket trick, packs of cards that looked all right, and all that sort of thing. But never had I

thought of going in until one day, almost without warning, Jip hauled me by my finger right up to the window,

and so conducted himself that there was nothing for it but to take him in.

I had not thought the place was there to tell the truth.

A modest-sized frontage in Regent Street between the picture shop

and the place where the

chicks run about just out of patent incubators. There it was, sure enough. I had fancied it was down

nearer the circus, or round the corner in Oxford Street, or even in Holburn, always over the way

and a little inaccessible it had been, with something

of the mirage in its position. But here it was now quite indisputably, and the fat end of Jip's pointing

...