“Who are ye goin’ to walk with?” said she.
“With youse, if ye’ll let me!” eagerly.
Rosie looked pleased. “Git our names down,” said she, “so’s we’ll be called out.”
She entered the house just as Roddy Ferguson came out, his hands full of black cotton gloves and streamers of crape.
“Hold out yer fin, McCarty,” commanded Roddy. “Say, Casey, youse kin tie a bow knot, so gimme a lift with these. I’d ask youse to come inside, gents,” went on O’Connor’s aid, “but the house is packed with women, and I know youse ain’t proud.”
“Who’s got the list, Furgy?” asked Larkin.
“O’Connor. Him and Larry’s makin’ it up in the kitchen.”
Jimmie Larkin took off his hat in the entry and pushed into the room where the body lay exposed to view. Mary sat at the head of the casket; beside her were the Kellys, the mother with her handkerchief to her eyes, the father talking across the corpse to a friend, the son half asleep in his chair. Tall candles shed their light about the room; the walls were draped in dead black; the polished lid of the casket stood awesomely in a corner; the flowers sent by friends and the potted plants furnished by the undertaker smelt sickeningly sweet and heavy in the close, crowded room.
The old man looked very peaceful; death had removed the hard, crabbed lines from his face, and the pale hands, twined about with a rosary, and holding a small crucifix, seemed, to the tenants, very different from the grasping old claws that he had been accustomed to thrust out for the rent. Some of the people sat, some stood, others again knelt, hurrying over the set prayers for the dead.
“What a beautiful corpse!” ejaculated Ellen O’Hara, in a loud whisper.