Had he been a common child, his reason would have given way; but one result of the overflow of his love was, that he had never yet known fear for himself.

His sweet confident face, innocent eyes, and caressing ways, had almost always drawn a response more or less in kind; and that certain some should not repel him, was a fuller response from them than gifts from others.

Except now and then, rarely, a street boy a little bigger than himself, no one had ever hurt him, and the hurt upon these occasions had not gone very deep, for the child was brave and hardy.
So now it was not fear, but the loss of old confidence, a sickness coming over the heart and brain of his love, that unnerved him.

It was not the horrid cruelty to his friend, and his own grievous loss thereby, but the recoil of his loving endeavour that, jarring him out of every groove of thought, every socket of habit, every joint of action, cast him from the city, and made of him a wanderer indeed, not a wanderer in a strange country, but a wanderer in a strange world.
To no traveller could one land well be so different from another, as to Gibbie the country was from the town.

He had seen bushes and trees before, but only over garden walls, or in one or two of the churchyards.