The Blue Castle

How it begins.

If it had not rained on a certain May morning Valancy Stirling’s whole life would have been entirely different. She would have gone, with the rest of her clan, to Aunt Wellington’s engagement picnic and Dr. Trent would have gone to Montreal. But it did rain and you shall hear what happened to her because of it. Valancy wakened early, in the lifeless, hopeless hour just preceding dawn. She had not slept very well. One does not sleep well, sometimes, when one is twenty-nine on the morrow, and unmarried, in a community and connection where the unmarried are simply those who have failed to get a man.

The Blue Castle · L. M. Montgomery

• LilyStandardBritish · female · the free engine0:29

This is the passage the app plays when you tap Play Sample, here in one of the Standard engine’s voices. In the app it is generated on your device, in whichever voice you have picked.