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.