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 boys being set free symbolizes them being free from the rules of the school.
The uninhabited house represents the narrator's feeling of emptiness.
The blind street symbolizes the aimless and drab life on North Richmond Street.
The consciousness of decent lives symbolizes a comparison of neighbors' lives.