Robby 's face is so lugubrious that it is no wonder I have bad dreams . Why , the first night I was here I dreamed I COULD N'T LAUGH . `` 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 would n'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 has n'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 do n't think there are many to call . I have n'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 XXXXX here .
If as because except for in like on that to