4 And 5 The Blue Castle - Read By Stephanie Poppins

Welcome to sleep stories with Steph.

It is time to relax and fully let go.

There is nothing you need to be doing now and nowhere you need to go.

Close your eyes and feel yourself sink into the support beneath you and let all the worries of the day 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.

There is nothing you need to be doing now and nowhere you need to go.

Happy listening.

Chapter 4 Got your rubbers on?

Called Cousin Stiggles as Valancy left the house.

Christine Stiggles had never once forgotten to ask that question when Valancy went out on a damp day.

Her voice implied that Valancy had died of a cold several times already.

Got your rubbers on?

Mother,

I don't need a flannel petticoat.

My satin one's warm enough.

Doss,

Remember you had bronchitis two years ago.

Go and do as you are told.

Valancy went,

Though nobody will ever know just how near she came to hurling the rubber plant into the street before she went.

She hated that grey flannel petticoat more than any other garment she owned.

Olive never had to wear flannel petticoats.

Olive wore ruffled silk and sheer lawn and filmy lace flounces.

But Olive's father had married money and Olive never had bronchitis.

So there you were.

Are you sure you didn't leave the soap in the water?

Demanded Mrs.

Frederick.

But Valancy was gone.

She turned at the corner and looked back down the ugly,

Prim,

Respectable street where she lived.

The sterling house was the ugliest on it.

More like a red brick box than anything.

Too high for its breadth and made higher still by a bulbous glass cupola on the top.

About it was the desolate,

Barren piece of an old house whose life had been lived.

There was a very pretty little house with leaded casements and dubbed gables just round the corner.

It was a new house,

One of those houses you love the minute you see them.

Clayton Markley built it for his bride.

He was to be married to Jenny Lloyd in June.

The little house,

It was said,

Was furnished from attic to cellar in complete readiness for its mistress.

I don't envy Jenny the man,

Thought Valancy sincerely.

Clayton Markley was not one of her many ideals.

But I do envy her the house.

It's such a nice young house.

If only I could have a house of my own.

Ever so poor,

So tiny,

But my own.

But then,

She added bitterly,

There's no use in yowling for the moon when you can't even get a tallow candle.

In Dreamland,

Nothing would do Valancy but a castle of pale sapphire.

In real life,

She would have been fully satisfied with a little house of her own.

She envied Jenny Lloyd more fiercely than ever today.

Jenny was not so much better looking than she was and not so very much younger.

Yet she was to have this delightful house and the nicest little Wedgwood teacups.

Valancy had seen them.

An open fireplace and monogrammed linen.

Hem stitched tablecloths and china closets.

Why did everything come to some girls and nothing to others?

It just wasn't fair.

Valancy was once more seething with rebellion as she walked along.

A prim,

Dowdy little figure in her shabby raincoat and three-year-old hat.

Splashed occasionally by the mud of a passing motor with its insulting shrieks.

Motors were still rather a novelty in Deerwood,

Though they were common in Port Lawrence and most of the summer residents up at Muskoka had them.

In Deerwood,

Only some of the smart set had them,

For even Deerwood was divided into sets.

There was the smart set,

The intellectual set,

The old family set of which the Stirlings were members,

The common run and a few pariahs.

Not one of the Stirling clan had as yet condescended to a motor,

Though Olive was teasing her father to have one.

Valancy had never even been in a motorcar,

But she did not hang her after this.

In truth,

She felt rather afraid of motorcars,

Especially at night.

They seemed to be too much like big purring beasts that might turn and crush you or make some terrible savage leap somewhere.

On the steep mountain trails around her blue castle,

Only gaily comparison steeds might proudly pace.

In real life,

Valancy would have been quite contented to drive in a buggy behind a nice horse.

She got a buggy drive only when some uncle or cousin remembered to fling her a chance,

Like a bone to a dog.

Of course,

She must buy the tea in Uncle Benjamin's grocery store.

To buy it anywhere else was unthinkable.

Yet Valancy hated to go to Uncle Benjamin's on her 29th birthday,

And there was no hope he would not remember it.

Why,

Demanded he leeringly as he tied up her tea,

Are young ladies like Blad grammarians?

Valancy,

With Uncle Benjamin's will in the background of her mind,

Said meekly,

I don't know,

Uncle,

Why?

Because,

He chuckled,

They can't decline matrimony.

The two clerks,

Joe Hammond and Claude Bertram,

Chuckled,

And Valancy disliked them a little more than ever.

On the first day Bertram had seen her in the store,

She'd heard him whisper,

Who's that?

And Joe said,

Valancy Stirling,

One of the dearwood old maids.

Curable or incurable?

This had been asked with a snicker,

Evidently thinking the question very clever.

Valancy smarted anew with a sting of that old recollection.

29,

Uncle Benjamin was saying,

Dear me,

Doss,

You're dangerously near the second corner and not even thinking of getting married.

29,

It seems impossible.

How time does fly.

I think it crawls,

Said Valancy passionately.

Poor Doss is taking it hard,

He said when she left.

Valancy was sorry by the time she reached the next crossing.

Why had she lost her patience and just left like that?

Uncle Benjamin would be annoyed and likely tell her mother Doss had been impertinent.

Well,

I've held my tongue for 20 years,

She thought.

Yes,

It was just 20,

Valancy reflected,

Since she'd first been tweeted about her loverless condition.

She remembered the bitter moment perfectly.

She was just nine years old and she was standing alone on the school playground while the other little girls of her class were playing a game in which you must be chosen by a boy as his partner before you could play.

Nobody had chosen Valancy,

Little pale black haired Valancy with her prim long sleeved apron and odd slanted eyes.

I'm so sorry for you,

Said a pretty little girl,

You haven't got a bow.

Valancy had said defiantly,

As she continued to say for 20 years,

I don't want a bow.

But this afternoon,

Once and for all,

She stopped saying that.

I'm going to be honest with myself anyhow,

She thought savagely.

Uncle Benjamin's riddles hurt me because they're true.

I do want to be married.

I want a house of my own,

A husband of my own.

I want sweet little fat babies of my own.

Then she stopped suddenly,

Aghast at her own recklessness.

She felt sure Reverend Dr.

Stalling,

Who passed at this very moment,

Read her thoughts and disapproved of them thoroughly.

Valancy was afraid of Dr.

Stalling.

She had been afraid of him ever since the Sunday 23 years before when he first come to St.

Albans.

Valancy had been too late for Sunday school that day and she'd gone into the church timidly and sat in their pew.

No one else was there except the new rector,

Dr.

Stalling.

He stood up in front of the choir door,

Beckoned to her and said sternly,

Little boy,

Come up here.

Valancy had stared around her.

There was no little boy.

There was no one in all the huge church but herself.

This strange man with the blue glasses couldn't mean her,

Could he?

She was not a boy.

Little boy,

He repeated more sternly still,

Shaking his forefinger fiercely,

Come up here at once.

Valancy arose as if hypnotised and walked up the aisle.

She was too terrified to do anything else.

Take off your hat,

He said.

Go back to your seat now and always take off your hat in church.

Valancy took off her hat and had a scrawny little pigtail hanging down her back.

Dr.

Stalling was short-sighted and did not perceive it.

When her mother came in,

She said,

Doss,

What do you mean by taking off your hat?

Put it on instantly.

So she put it back on.

She was cold with fear lest Dr.

Stalling should immediately summon her up the front again.

He found out his mistake and laughed over it.

But Valancy did not laugh.

She never got over her dread of him and now to be caught by him on the street corner thinking such things.

Valancy got her John Foster book back,

Magic of Wings.

His latest all about birds,

Said Miss Clarkson.

She had almost decided she would go home instead of seeing Dr.

Trent.

Her courage had failed her.

She was afraid of offending Uncle James,

Afraid of angering her mother and afraid of facing gruff,

Shaggy-browed Dr.

Trent who would probably tell her that her trouble was entirely imaginary and she'd only had it because she'd like to have it.

She would go and get a bottle of Red Fern's purple pills instead.

They were the standard medicine of the Stirling clan.

Had they not cured second cousin Geraldine when five doctors had given her up?

Valancy always felt very sceptical concerning the virtues of the purple pills.

But there might be something in them and it was easier to take them than face Dr.

Trent alone.

She would just glance over the magazines in the reading room a few minutes and then go home.

Valancy tried to read a story but it made her furious.

On every page was a picture of the heroine surrounded by adoring men and here was she,

Valancy Stirling,

Who could not get a solitary bow.

Valancy slammed the magazine shut then opened The Magic of Wings by John Foster.

Almost all the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that someone is afraid of something,

He wrote.

Fear is the original sin.

It is a cold,

Slimy serpent coiling about you.

It is horrible to live with fear and it is,

Of all things,

Degrading.

And so Valancy shut the book,

Stood up and walked in to see Dr.

Trent.

After all.