In the early stages of Jocelyn's relapse the Parkers of Baggot Street descended on Roscarna in force: a proceeding that Lady Hewish had discountenanced in her lifetime. Neither Jocelyn nor Biddy invited them to stay, and they returned to Dublin scandalised, with the report of Gabrielle, a very small baby of eighteen months with coal black eyes and hair, playing like a kitten with the foot of a dead rabbit on the kitchen floor. "Only to think what poor Laura would have felt!" they sighed, not realising that such a train of thought was in the nature of things unprofitable.
So Gabrielle grew, and so, in a few years, Jocelyn, with a tremendous effort pulled himself together, returning, as though refreshed, to his sporting pursuits, the woods, the lake and the river. He even found a new hobby: the breeding of Cocker spaniels, and worked up an interest in the development of his daughter that ran easily with that of training his puppies. He took a great delight in teasing small animals, and treated Gabrielle and the cockers on much the same lines, with the result that the puppies were usually a little cowed and puzzled when he teased them, but Gabrielle bit his hand. This pleased him; for he set great store by animal spirits in any form, and he carried his fingers bandaged in the hunting-field for several weeks in order that he might tell the story of his daughter's prowess. Jocelyn was growing rather childish in his old age.
There were really three periods in Gabrielle's early life. The first, before her father began to take notice of her, was spent altogether in the company of Biddy, who embraced her in her general devotion to children. Biddy called herself a Catholic, and for this reason secretly feared and hated the supervision of young Mr. Considine, a priest of the Church of Ireland; but at heart she was as pagan as the top of Slievegullion, and along with her favourite Christian oaths (in one of which St. Anthony of Padua was disguised as Saint Antonio Perrier), and her whispered "Aves," she taught Gabrielle enough pagan mythology and folklore to set her head spinning whenever she found herself alone in the woods or the fields.
If ever she strayed into the forbidden lanes beyond the lodge-gates at Roscarna she lived in fear of seeing the dead-coach come round the corner: a tall coach, painted black and drawn by coal-black horses and on the box two men, black-coated with black faces, who might jump from the coach and catch her up and throw her inside it. You could never know when the dead-coach was coming, for its wheels were bound with old black rags, so that they made no noise on the stones. Then, in the fields where corn was growing one might come across the "limrechaun," with consequences untold but terrible. And, above all things, she was never to pick up an old comb in the road, for as like as not the comb would be the property of the banshee, a little old woman with long nails 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.
