and hairy arms. When Gabrielle asked what would happen if she
picked up the banshee's comb, Biddy told her that the banshee would
come crying to her window at night, and that if this ever happened, she
must get a pair of red hot tongs and hold the comb in the window for
the banshee to take. This seemed to Gabrielle an unnecessary
complication; but Biddy told her that if she didn't follow it in every
particular the banshee would scratch the hand off her. Faced with the
possibility of this disaster, and not knowing how she could possibly
get hold of a pair of red hot tongs in the middle of the night,
Gabrielle decided that if ever she saw a comb in the road, she would
not bring it home with her. And this was a wise decision, for the
heads of the children in Joyce's Country were not above suspicion.
Indeed most of the terrors with which Biddy inspired her were based on
principles that were ethically sound and combined romantic colour with
practical utility.

When she was six her father began to take her out with him at the time
when he exercised the puppies. She and the puppies would run about
together and by the same word be called to heel. She found that she
could do most of the things that they did. Once, on a summer day when
two of them had conscientiously frightened a water-rat out of its hole
on the margin of the lake, Gabrielle, who was far ahead of her father
and hot with running, plunged in after them. She got her mouth full of
water, and thought she was drowning, and Jocelyn, frightened for her
life, ran in after her and rescued her with the water up to his neck.
"Now that you're here," he said, "you'd better learn to swim." And he
made her, then and there, bringing her back to Biddy Joyce like a small
drowned cat, with her black hair clinging close to her head. It was a
great achievement, and since Biddy could not, for the moment, produce
any mythological terror in the nature of a Loreley better than a pike
that preyed on swimmers, Gabrielle would often go down to the lake
secretly in the middle of a summer morning, and strip off her clothes
and float on her back in the sunshine. She must have looked a strange
little thing with her long white legs, her smooth black hair, her deep
violet eyes, and her red lips; for she had this amazing combination of
features that you will sometimes find in the far West. She did not get
them from her mother or from Jocelyn, both of whom were blond Saxons.
I suppose t