Araby
by james joyce (excerpt)
north richmond street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the christian brothers' school set the boys free. an uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground. the other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces.
the former tenant of our house, a priest, had died in the back drawing-room. air, musty from having been long enclosed, hung in all the rooms, and the waste room behind the kitchen was littered with old useless papers. among these i found a few paper-covered books, the pages of which were curled and damp: the abbot, by walter scott, the devout communicant, and the memoirs of vidocq. i liked the last best because its leaves were yellow. the wild garden behind the house contained a central apple-tree and a few straggling bushes, under one of which i found the late tenant's rusty bicycle-pump. he had been a very charitable priest; in his will he had left all his money to institutions and the furniture of his house to his sister.
when the short days of winter came, dusk fell before we had well eaten our dinners. when we met in the street the houses had grown sombre. the space of sky above us was the colour of ever-changing violet and towards it the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns. the cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed. our shouts echoed in the silent street. the career of our play brought us through the dark muddy lanes behind the houses, where we ran the gauntlet of the rough tribes from the cottages, to the back doors of the dark dripping gardens where odours arose from the ashpits, to the dark odorous stables where a coachman smoothed and combed the horse or shook music from the buckled harness.
select the correct answer.
what is the overall mood of the passage?
a. the passage has an ominous mood throughout.
b. the passage has a melancholy mood throughout.
c. the passage moves from a cheerful to a sad mood.
d. the passage moves from a bleak to a foreboding mood.