“The parlor is tiny and neat. Its one window is so shaded by a huge willow
that the room has a grotto-like effect of emerald gloom. There are wonderful
tidies on the chairs, and gay mats on the floor, and books and cards carefully
arranged on a round table, and vases of dried grass on the mantel-piece. Between
the vases is a cheerful decoration of preserved coffin plates—five in all,
pertaining respectively to Janet’s father and mother, a brother, her sister Anne,
and a hired man who died here once! If I go suddenly insane some of these days
‘know all men by these presents’ that those coffin-plates have caused it.
“But it’s all delightful and I said so. Janet loved me for it, just as she detested
poor Esther because Esther had said so much shade was unhygienic and had
objected to sleeping on a feather bed. Now, I glory in feather-beds, and the more
unhygienic and feathery they are the more I glory. Janet says it is such a comfort
to see me eat; she had been so afraid I would be like Miss Haythorne, who
wouldn’t eat anything but fruit and hot water for breakfast and tried to make
Janet give up frying things. Esther is really a dear girl, but she is rather given to
fads. The trouble is that she hasn’t enough imagination and HAS a tendency to
indigestion.
“Janet told me I could have the use of the parlor when any young men called!
I don’t think there are many to call. I haven’t seen a young man in Valley Road
yet, except the next-door hired boy—Sam Toliver, a very tall, lank, tow-haired
youth. He came over one evening recently and sat for an hour on the garden
fence, near the front porch where Janet and I were doing fancy-work. The only
remarks he volunteered in all that time were, ‘Hev a peppermint, miss! Dew
now-fine thing for carARRH, peppermints,’ and, ‘Powerful lot o’ jump-grasses
round here ternight. Yep.’
“But there is a love affair going on here. It seems to be my fortune to be
mixed up, more or less actively, with elderly love affairs. Mr. and Mrs. Irving
always say that I brought about their marriage. Mrs. Stephen Clark of Carmody
persists in being most grateful to me for a suggestion which somebody else
would probably have made if I hadn’t. I do really think, though, that Ludovic
Speed would never have got any further along than placid courtship if I had not
helped him and Theodora Dix out.
“In the present affair I am only a passive spectator. I’ve tried once to help
things along and made an awful mess of it. So I shall not meddle again. I’ll tell
you all about it when we meet.”