Hi friends, it's Cheryl, and welcome to Sleep Tight Relax.
Before we listen to our story, let's get cozy and comfortable.
You can close your eyes if you'd like.
Tonight's story takes place in our home, a place called Prince Edward Island, a small, beautiful island off the east coast of Canada with soil as red as rust and where the summers smell like clover and salt air and the roads wind through meadows so green they almost don't look real.
A woman named Lucy Maud Montgomery grew up here and she spent her whole life writing stories about it.
Stories full of curious children, quiet mysteries and long golden afternoons that feel like they might last forever.
This is one of those stories.
It's about a group of friends on a summer mission trying to raise money for a school library and the strange, kind man who lives alone in a big grey house at the end of a long green lane.
His name is Jasper Dale, though the children call him the Awkward Man, and there is a mystery about him.
You don't need to solve it tonight.
Some mysteries are best solved over time.
Before we start our story, we will take one deep breath together.
Breathe in slow and easy all the way down and let it go.
One more in and out.
Good.
Let's close our eyes, use our imaginations to transport ourselves to a small island and listen to our story.
The Mystery of Golden Milestone.
Our teacher thought it would be a fine thing to have a library at the school.
He suggested that each of us try to raise as much money as we could during the month of June, by honest work or by asking our friends and neighbors to chip in.
The result was a fierce, friendly rivalry to see who could collect the most.
Our relatives started us off with a quarter apiece.
For the rest, we'd have to manage on our own.
Peter gathered eggs and got to keep one in every dozen to sell.
Felicity made a similar deal with her mother.
The story girl and Cecily each earned 10 cents a week washing dishes.
Felix and Dan pulled weeds from the gardens.
I caught brook trout in the valley and sold them for a cent apiece.
Sarah Ray was the only unhappy one among us.
She had no relatives in Carlisle except her mother, and her mother didn't approve of the library project.
She wouldn't give Sarah a cent or help her earn one.
To Sarah, this was humiliation she couldn't put into words.
Every day.
She watched the rest of us count our slowly growing hoard of coins with miserly delight and felt like an outsider.
I'm just going to put my wish out into the world and hope that money comes somehow, she said at last.
I doubt the world troubles itself about such things, said Dans.
It leaves people to earn their own money.
I can't, said Sarah plaintively.
Then the world is very unfair and ought to know better.
Don't worry, said Cecily, who was always the one to smooth things over.
If you can't collect anything, everybody will know it's not your fault.
I won't ever feel like reading a single book in that library if I can't give something to it.
Sarah said.
Dan and the girls and I were sitting in a row on Aunt Olive's garden fence, watching Felix weed.
Felix worked well, even though he didn't enjoy it.
Some boys never do, Felix informed him.
Felix pretended not to hear, but I could tell he did, because his ears went red.
Felix's face never blushed, but his ears always gave him away.
I always feel sorry for the weeds, said the story girl in a dreamy sort of way.
It must be hard to be pulled up like that.
They shouldn't grow in the wrong place, said Felicity.
When weeds get to heaven, I suppose there'll be flowers, said the story girl.
I slipped away at this point, remembering I was due for a dose of magic seed.
I'd bought it from Billy Robinson three days ago.
He told me it would make me grow fast, and I was starting to worry that I wouldn't.
I'd heard Aunt Janet say I was going to be short like Uncle Alec.
I loved Uncle Alec, but I had other plans.
So I'd paid Billy ten cents and had been taking a pinch of seed every three hours ever since, walking backward as instructed and measuring myself against a mark on the hall door.
No change yet, but then it had only been three days.
One afternoon, the story girl had an idea.
Let's go and ask the awkward man for a contribution to the library fund, she said.
I'm sure nobody's thought to ask him because nobody in Carlisle is related to him.
We'll all go together and if he gives us anything, we'll split it equally.
It was a daring plan.
The awkward man was considered an eccentric and Mr Campbell, who we'd also visit, was said to hate children.
But where the story girl led, the rest of us followed, pretty much without question.
We set out the next Saturday afternoon, taking a shortcut to Golden Milestone over a long green lane full of quiet meadows where sunshine seemed to have fallen asleep.
Things were not entirely harmonious at first.
Felicity was in a bad mood because Aunt Janet had refused to let her wear her second best dress, saying her school clothes were good enough to go traipsing around in.
Then the story girl arrived in her very best a soft crimson silk dress and a white hat ringed with flame-red poppies, sent by her father all the way from Paris.
Neither Felicity nor Cecily could have worn it, but on the story girl, it was exactly right.
I wouldn't think you'd put on your best clothes to go begging for the library, said Felicity.
Aunt Olivia says when you're going to have an important interview, you ought to look your very best, said the story girl, giving her skirt a swirl and enjoying the effect.
Aunt Olivia spoils you, said Felicity.
She doesn't either.
Aunt Olivia is just sweet.
She kisses me goodnight every single night, and your mother never kisses you.
My mother doesn't make kisses so common, said Felicity, but she gives us pie at dinner every day.
So does Aunt Olivia.
Yes, but look at the size of the pieces.
And Aunt Olivia gives you skim milk.
My mother gives us cream.
Aunt Olivia's skim milk is as good as your mother's cream.
Oh, girls, don't fight, said Cecily.
It's such a nice day.
We're not fighting, said Felicity.
I like Aunt Olivia, but my mother is just as good.
There now.
Of course she is.
Aunt Janet is wonderful, agreed the story girl.
They smiled at each other.
Felicity and the story girl were actually quite fond of one another, underneath all the friction.
You once said you knew a story about the awkward man, said Felix.
You could tell it to us.
All right, said the story girl.
The only trouble is I don't know the whole of it, but I'll tell you what I do know.
She called it the mystery of Golden Milestone.
The awkward man's real name was Jasper Dale.
He had lived alone since his mother died ten years before.
His hired man, Abel Griggs, lived in a little house down the lane with his wife.
Mrs. Griggs made his bed and cleaned his house now and then.
She said he kept it very neat.
But there was one room she had never seen.
It was always locked.
The west one, looking out over the garden.
One day last fall, the awkward man went to Summerside, and Mrs. Griggs was scrubbing his kitchen.
When she finished, she went over the whole house and tried the door of the West Room.
She expected it to be locked as usual.
It was not locked.
She opened it and went in.
"'What do you suppose she found?' said the story girl.
"'Something like Bluebeard's chamber,' said Felix, in a nervous sort of tone.
"'No, no, nothing like that could happen in Prince Edward Island.'
But Mrs. Griggs could hardly have been more astonished if it had.
The room had been empty in his mother's time.
Now it was elegantly furnished.
There was a carpet like green velvet on the floor, lace curtains at the windows, beautiful pictures on the walls.
A little white bed, a dressing table, a bookcase full of books, a rocking chair and above the bookcase a picture of a very pretty girl.
But the most amazing thing of all was that a woman's dress was hanging over a chair by the table.
Not the kind of thing his mother would have worn.
She thought it a sin to wear anything but plain cloth.
This dress was pale blue silk.
And beside it, on the floor, a pair of blue satin slippers with high heels.
And in the front of every book, the same name written.
Alice.
There was never an Alice in the Dale family.
And nobody ever heard of the awkward man having a sweetheart.
Now, isn't that a mystery?
It's a strange story, said Felix.
Do you think it's true?
I believe it is, said the story girl and I intend to find out what it means.
I'm going to get acquainted with the awkward man one day and then I'll ask him.
I don't see how you'd ever manage that, said Felicity.
He never goes anywhere except to church.
He's a perfect hermit.
I'll find a way, said the story girl, and none of us doubted she would.
But I'll have to wait until I'm a little older.
He wouldn't tell the secret of the West Room to a little girl.
And I can't wait too long, either, because he's frightened of grown-up girls.
He thinks they'll laugh at him.
But I know I'll like him.
He has such a nice face.
He looks like someone you could tell things to.
We were near Golden Milestone now.
The house was big and weather gray, overgrown with vines and climbing roses.
Something about the three square windows in the upper story gave it a look of winking at us through the leaves.
The story girl pointed it out, and after that we could all see it plainly.
We didn't make it inside.
We met the awkward man in his yard and he gave us a quarter apiece for the library without much fuss.
He didn't seem awkward or shy with us, though we were only children and this was his own ground.
He was a tall, slender man who didn't look his forty years.
His forehead was smooth, his dark blue eyes clear and thoughtful.
His black hair long and free of any gray.
He had large hands and feet and walked with a slight stoop.
We stared at him, I'm afraid rather rudely, but was not a man who kept blue silk dresses in a locked room and possibly wrote poetry a fair object of curiosity.
When we got away, we compared notes.
We had all liked him, though he'd said little and seemed glad enough to be rid of us.
He gave us the money like a gentleman, said the story girl.
He didn't grudge it.
She looked back once at the gray house with its winking windows and its climbing roses and didn't say anything else for a little while.
If you are still awake, let's try to use our imagination again.
You're in the lane, the long green lane that leads to Golden Milestone, the one the children's took on that Saturday afternoon.
It stretches out ahead of you between two old rows of trees, their branches meeting overhead, the light coming through in patches.
Warm yellow on the grass, cool shadow, warm yellow again.
The meadows open up on either side.
The grass is long and a brilliant green, and the sunshine has, as the story girl said, fallen asleep in it.
Bees move through the clover without any particular destination.
A bird calls from somewhere in the trees and another one answers.
And then they're both quiet.
You're walking, but not in a hurry.
There's nowhere you need to be.
The lane goes on at whatever pace you like.
The air smells of warm grass and something sweet.
Wild roses, maybe.
You can see them coming up ahead, climbing along an old fence.
Pink and white and very still in the afternoon calm.
Their petals are soft.
Their prickly thorns are nothing to worry about.
You pass them slowly.
The lane bends and the grey house comes into view at the end of it, big and weather-worn, wrapped in vines and climbing roses.
Three square windows in the upper story catching the light.
The story girl is right.
It does look like it's winking at you through the leaves.
A friendly sort of winking.
A house that has kept its secrets a long time and doesn't mind.
You don't need to go inside.
You can just stand here at the edge of the lane, in the long grass. in the afternoon light.
The roses on the fence are nodding very slightly in a breeze you can barely feel.
The meadow stretches away behind you golden and still.
Somewhere down the lane, a bee moves through the clover unhurried, the soft hum of it just reaching you and then fading.
The windows of Golden Milestone catch a cloud going over and the light changes for a moment softer, cooler.
And then the cloud passes and the warmth comes back.
You could stand here a long time.
There's no reason not to.
Your feet are settled in the cool grass.
The sun is on your face, easy and warm.
The whole island is quiet around you, PEI in the middle of a June afternoon, holding its breath just slightly, the way a perfect day sometimes does.
The roses nod.
The bee is gone now, somewhere deeper in the meadow.
The windows wink.
And the afternoon holds you gently in the long green lane, in the sunshine, in the not knowing of the mystery, in the good and easy feeling of a summer day that has nowhere left to go.
Take another slow, deep breath in if you like.
You are calm, relaxed, and peaceful.
Good night.
Sleep tight.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
