The living room of a house, or a room for entertaining guests; a room for talking.
(archaic) The apartment in a monastery or nunnery where the residents are permitted to meet and converse with each other or with visitors from the outside.
So, after a spell, he decided to make the best of it and shoved us into the front parlor. 'Twas a dismal sort of place, with hair wreaths, and wax fruit, and tin lambrekins, and land knows what all.