Old
ABRAHAM PEEP sat on one side of the fireplace, his figure yet telling
a tale of former vigour. On the other sat POLLY, his wife, an aimless,
neutral, slatternly peasant woman, such as in these parts a man may
find with the profusion of Wessex blackberries. An empty chair between
them spoke with all an empty chair's eloquence of an absent inmate.
A butter-churn stood in a corner next to an ancient clock that had
ticked away the mortality of many a past and gone PEEP.
CHAPTER II.
[Illustration: {Bonduca Peep.}]
"Where be BONDUCA?" said ABRAHAM, shifting his body upon his chair
so as to bring his wife's faded tints better into view. "Like enough
she's met in with that slack-twisted 'hor's bird of a feller, TOM
TATTERS. And she'll let the sheep draggle round the hills. My soul,
but I'd like to baste 'en for a poor slammick of a chap."
Mrs. PEEP smiled feebly. She had had her troubles. Like other
realities, they took on themselves a metaphysical mantle of
infallibility, sinking to minor cerebral phenomena for quiet
contemplation. She had no notion how they did this. And, it must
be added, that they might, had they felt so disposed, have stood as
pressing concretions which chafe body and soul--a most disagreeable
state of things, peculiar to the miserably passive existence of a
Wessex peasant woman.
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