Matt associates the color blue with kindness and warmth. The people “yonder” treat him very well, unlike the people in the Fen and the village. Matt’s speculation that the people “yonder” are kind because they are disabled suggests that kindness for them was a necessity—that it was only through kindness that they could mutually survive. The implication here is that people are products of their environments: they’re kind if their situations require them to be kind, and they’re cruel if, as in the village, there’s an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty. The novel will complicate this idea, though, in its final chapters.