58 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND 



There must be some reason for this : there is for 

 everything. Becky Sharp was once an ingenuous 

 child. There may have been a time, also, when 

 whins only put forth soft leaves. Wherefore, 

 then, the change in the plant and the girl ? " Many 

 a dun had Becky talked to, and turned away from 

 her father's door; many a tradesman had she 

 coaxed and wheedled into good-humour, and the 

 granting of one meal more." That seems sufficient 

 to account for the departure of the green leaves 

 and the substitution of the bristles ; together with 

 the disposition not to mind whom she pricked 

 indeed, rather to enjoy it, so long as she kept 

 herself right. 



Let us suppose that the whin was driven 

 out into waste places, and that there it was ex- 

 posed to duns in the shape of grazing cattle, and 

 troublesome tradesmen in the shape of nibbling 

 rodents. In this hard school it would naturally 

 acquire a certain precocity, quite shocking in 

 its way, to the sheltered growths of the 

 inlands. 



Even in its present condition, it is still nibbled 

 by the rabbits into compact masses of all manner 

 of fantastic shapes. But as often as the persecu- 

 tion, which first taught it to look after itself, is 



