Meanwhile Bonduca Peep--little Bo Peep was the name by which the
country-folk all knew her--sat dreaming upon the hill-side, looking out
with a premature woman's eyes upon the rich valley that stretched away
to the horizon. The rest of the landscape was made up of agricultural
scenes and incidents which the slightest knowledge of Wessex novels can
fill in amply. There were rows of swedes, legions of dairymen, maidens
to milk the lowing cows that grazed soberly upon the rich pasture,
farmers speaking rough words of an uncouth dialect, and gentlefolk
careless of a milkmaid's honour. But nowhere, as far as the eye could
reach, was there a sign of the sheep that Bo had that morning set forth
to tend for her parents. Bo had a flexuous and finely-drawn figure not
unreminiscent of many a vanished knight and dame, her remote
progenitors, whose dust now mouldered in many churchyards. There was
about her an amplitude of curve which, joined to a certain luxuriance of
moulding, betrayed her sex even to a careless observer. And when she
spoke, it was often with a fetishistic utterance in a monotheistic
falsetto which almost had the effect of startling her relations into
temporary propriety.