If so, what good would this her journey do?
Ah, but perhaps the good God would allow her to see him first, or--well, she walked on, reason or no reason.
The sun was high, the blue of the sky seemed a hundred miles in depth, and not wisp or feather of cloud in it anywhere! Where the flat fields were untilled they were very green, a green that was almost yellow, it was so bright.

Within the strip of railway land a tangle of young bushes grew, and on every twig buds were bursting.

About a mile back from the road, on either side, fir woods stood, the trees in close level phalanx.
Everywhere over the land birds big and little were fluttering and flying.
Zilda did not notice any of these things; she had only learned to observe two things in nature, both of which Gilby had pointed out to her--the red or yellow rose of the winter sunset, the depth of colour in the petals of her flowers.

Nature was to her like a language of which she had only been told the meaning of two words.

In the course of the next month she learned the meaning of a few more; she never made further progress, but what she learned she learned.
The river which, farther on, had done damage to the line, here ran close to it for some distance, consequently Zilda came to the river before she reached the scene of the disaster.