The Dead by James

The Dead by James Joyce.

Lily, the caretaker's daughter, was literally run off her feet.

Hardly as she'd brought one gentleman into the little pantry behind the office on the ground floor

and helped him off with his overcoat.

The no wheezy hall door bell clanged again, and she had to scamper

along the bare hallway to let in another guest. It was well for her that she had not to attend to the

ladies also, but Miss Kate and Miss Julia had thought of that, and had converted the bathroom upstairs

into a lady's dressing room. Miss Kate and Miss Julia were there,

gossiping and laughing and fussing, walking after each other to the head of the stairs,

peering down over the banisters. It was always a great affair, the Mrs. Morkan's annual dance.

Everybody who knew them came to it, members of the family, old friends of the family, the members of Julia's choir, any of Kate's pupils that were grown up enough, and even some of Mary Jane's pupils too. Never once had it fallen flat. For years and years it had gone off in splendid style as long as anyone could remember, ever since

Kate and Julia, after the death of their brother Pat, had left the house in Stony Batter

and taken Mary Jane, their only niece to live with them in the dark, gorned house on Usher's

island, the upper part of which they had rented from Mr. Fulham, the corn factor on the

ground floor. That was a good 30 years ago, if it was a day. Mary Jane, who was then a little

girl in short clothes, was now the main prop of the household, for she had the organ in Haddington

Road. She had been through the academy and gave a pupil's

concert every year in the upper room of the ancient concert rooms. Many of her pupils belonged to

the better class families on the Kingstown and Dolkine. Old as they were, her aunts also did their

share. Julia, though she was quite grey, was still the leading soprano in Adam and Eve's,

and Kate, being too feeble to go about much, gave music lessons to beginners on the old

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