Welcome to sleep stories with Steph your go-to podcast.
That offers you a calm and relaxing transition to sleep.
Into a great night's sleep.
It is time to relax and fully let go.
There is nothing you need to be doing now.
And know where you need to go.
Close your eyes.
And feel yourself sink into the support beneath you.
And let all the worries of the day go.
Drift away.
This is your time.
And your space.
Take a deep breath in through your nose.
And let it out with a long sigh.
That's it!
There is nothing you need to be doing now.
And know where you need to go.
Happy listening.
Chapter 14 Fancy Fed.
In October,
Cousin Jimmy began to boil the pig's potatoes.
Unromantic name for a most romantic occupation,
Or so it appeared to Emily,
Whose love of the beautiful and picturesque was satisfied,
As it had never yet been on those long,
Cool,
Starry twilights of the waning year at new moon.
There was a clump of spruce trees in the corner of the old orchard,
And under them an immense iron pot hung over a circle of large stones.
It was so big an ox could have comfortably been stewed in it.
Emily thought it must have come down from the days of fairy tales and been some giant's porridge pot,
But cousin Jimmy told her it was only a hundred years old,
And old Hugh Murray had sent it out from England.
We've used it ever since to boil the potatoes for the new moon peaks,
" he said.
Blair Waterfolk thinks it's old-fashioned.
They've all got boiler houses now.
But as long as Elizabeth's boss at New Moon,
We will use this.
Emily was sure no built-in boiler could have the charm of the big pot,
So she helped cousin Jimmy fill it full of potatoes after she came home from school.
Then when supper was over,
Cousin Jimmy lighted the fire under it and put it about all the evening.
Sometimes poking the fire,
Sending glorious streams of rosy sparks upward into the darkness.
Sometimes stirring the potatoes with a long pole looking with his queer-forked,
Grey beard and belted jumper like some old gnome or troll of Northern story,
Mixing the contents of a magical cauldron.
Sometimes he sat besides Emily on the grey granite boulder near the pot and recited his poetry for her.
Cousin Jimmy's poetry was surprisingly good in places.
And Cousin Jimmy had fit audience,
Though few,
In this slender little maiden with her pale,
Eager face and rapt eyes.
They were an old couple and they were perfectly happy together.
Blair Walter people thought Cousin Jimmy a failure and a mental weakling,
But he dwelt in an ideal world of which none of them knew anything.
He had recited his poems a hundred times thus as he boiled the potatoes.
The ghosts of a score of autumns haunted the clump of spruces for him.
He'd recited.
Many poems as an odd ridiculous figure bent and wrinkled and unkempt.
Gesticulating awkwardly as he did.
But it was his hour.
He was no longer in this our simple Jimmy Murray.
But in this hour,
He was a prince in his own realm.
He was young,
He was strong,
Splendid and beautiful.
Accredited master of song to a listening enraptured world.
None of his prosperous,
Sensible Blairwater neighbours ever lived through such an hour.
And at that hour he would not have changed place with one of them.
Emily,
Listening to him,
Felt vaguely that if it had not been for that unlucky push into the new moon well.
.
.
This queer little man might have been.
In the presence of kings.
But Elizabeth had pushed him into the New Moon well.
And as a consequence,
He boiled pigs' potatoes and recited to Emily poetry,
That made these evenings so much better.
She could not sleep after she went to bed until she had composed a minute description of them.
The flash came almost every evening now.
The wind woman swooped or purred in the tossing boughs above them.
And Emily had never been so near to seeing her.
The sharp air was full of the pleasant tang of the burning spruce cones that cousin Jimmy shoveled under the pot.
Emily's furry kitten frisked and scampered about like a small charming demon of the night.
All the while the fire glowed with beautiful redness and allure through the gloom.
There were nice whispery sounds everywhere.
The great big dark lay spread around them full of mysteries that daylight never revealed.
And overall a purple sky,
Powdered with stars.
Sometimes,
Ilsy and Teddy came too.
Emily always knew when Teddy was coming for he reached the old orchard and whistled his call.
This was one he used just for her.
The call always had an odd effect on Emily.
It seemed as if it fairly drew the heart out of her body and she had to follow it.
She thought Teddy could have whistled here clear across the world with those three magic notes.
Whenever she heard it she ran quickly through the orchard and told Teddy whether Cousin Jimmy wanted him or not.
Because it was only on certain nights Cousin Jimmy wanted anyone but her.
He would never recite his poetry to Ilse or Teddy,
But he told them fairy stories and tales about the old dead and gone Murries in the pond graveyard.
Sometimes these stories were as queer as the fairy stories.
And then Ilse would recite too.
Sometimes Teddy lay sprawled out on the ground beside the big pot and drew pictures by the light of the fire.
They had wonderful evenings there,
Those four children.
Don't you like the world at night,
Ilse?
Emily once said rapturously.
Ilsa glanced happily around her.
The poor little neglected child who had found in Emily's companionship what she hungered for in all her short life.
And was even now being led by love into something of her rightful heritage.
Yeah,
" she said.
I always believe there is a God when I'm here like this.
And at once the potatoes were done and Cousin Jimmy gave each of them one before he mixed in the bran.
They broke them into pieces on plates of birch bark.
Sprinkled them with salt.
Which Emily had cached in a small box under the roots of the biggest spruce.
And they ate them with gusto.
No banquet of gods was ever as delicious as those potatoes.
Then finally came Aunt Laura's kind silvery voice across the frosty dark.
And Ilse and Teddy scampered homewards,
While Emily captured her cat and shut him safely up for the night in the New Moon doghouse,
Which had held no dog for years.
But was still carefully preserved and whitewashed every spring.
Emily's heart would have broken if anything had happened to Mike the cat.
Old Kelly the tin peddler had given him to her.
Old Kelly had come round through Blair Water every fortnight from May to November for thirty years,
Perched on the seat of a bright red peggler's wagon.
Old Kelly and she were great friends.
Emily liked his clean,
Shaven face under his plug hat.
His nice twinkly blue eyes,
His brush of outstanding sandy hair.
And his comical pursed-up mouth,
The shape of which was partly due to nature and partly to much whistling.
He always had a three-cornered paper bag of lemon drops for her,
Or a candy stick of many colours,
Which he smuggled into her pocket when Aunt Elizabeth wasn't looking.
And he never forgot to tell her he supposed she'd soon be thinking of getting married.
For old Kelly thought the surest way to please a female creature of any age was to tease her about getting married.
One day,
Instead of candy,
He produced a plump grey kitten.
This was Mike 2.
Please let me keep it,
Aunt Elizabeth.
Emily begged.
It won't be a bit of bother to you.
I've had experience in bringing up cats and I'm so lonesome for a kitten.
Saucy Sal's getting so wild running about with the barn cats.
I can't associate with her like I used to.
And she never was nice to Cuddle.
Please Aunt Elizabeth.
Aunt Elizabeth would not and did not please.
She was in a very bad humour that day.
No one knew why.
She was being entirely unreasonable and would not listen to anyone.
In fact,
She was so cross,
Cousin Jimmy dared not smuggle the kitten up to the barn as he'd first planned to do.
Take that beast down to the pond and throw it in and come back and tell me you've done it.
She said angrily,
New Moon is not going to be made a dumping ground for old Jock Kelly's superfluous cats.
Cousin Jimmy did as he was told and Emily would not eat any dinner.
After dinner,
She stole mournfully away through the old orchard down the pasture to the pond.
When she reached the bank of the little creek,
Where lofty John's brook ran into Blairwater,
She heard piteous shrieks.
And there was Mike too.
She did not stop to count the consequences.
And she felt such a surge of sympathy,
It lifted her clean out of herself.
She burst into the cookhouse where Aunt Elizabeth was frying doughnuts.
I'm going to keep it.
I'm going to keep this kitten and I'm going to call him Mike too,
She said.
You're not,
Said Aunt Elizabeth.
Again Emily felt the odd sensation that had come across her.
When Aunt Elizabeth brought the scissors to cut her hair.
This poor little kitten is cold and starving,
She insisted,
And very miserable.
It's been suffering for hours.
She had Archibald Murray's look on her face and Archibald Murray's tone in her voice.
When Elizabeth Murray saw her father looking at her from Emily's little white face.
She surrendered without a struggle,
Rage at herself as she might afterwards for her weakness.
This was her one run point.
The thing might not have been so uncanny if Emily had resembled the Murrays,
But to see the Murray look suddenly superimposed like a mask over alien features was such a shock to Elizabeth's nerves she could not stand up against it.
A ghost from the grave could not have cowed her more speedily.
Turning her back on Emily in silence.
She refused to say any more.
But Emily knew that she had won her second victory.
That grey kitten stayed at New Moon and waxed fat and lovable,
And Aunt Elizabeth never took the slightest notice of it,
Save to sweep it out of the house when Emily was not about.
It was weeks before Emily was really forgiven.
And she did feel uncomfortable over it.
Aunt Elizabeth could be a not ungenerous conqueror.
But she was very disagreeable in defeat.
It was really just as well that Emily could not summon the Murray look at will.
