Answer:
a bicycle pump (and also books, if given)
Explanation:
"Araby" is one of the stories from James Joyce's set of stories, "Dubliners".
It is narrated from a young boy's point of view, living on New Richmond Street. The story begins with description of the street and then the house itself, giving information about previous occupant, a priest:
"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."