"And such are all they that put their trust in them!" concluded Willie, somewhat irrelevantly.
"Laddie, come doon out o' the pulpit. I canna lippen (trust) ony body to dust that, bena mysel'! Gang and pick up the conversation lozengers aff the floor o' the Young Weemen's Bible Cless!"
Printed words can give small indication of the intense bitterness and mordant satire of Willie's speech as he uttered these last words.
Yet Willie was far from being a hater of women kind. Indeed, the end of all his moralising was ever the same.
"There's my ain guid wife—was there ever a woman like her? Snod as a new preen, yet nocht gaudy, naething ken-speckle. If only the young weemen nooadays were like Betty, they wad hae nae need o' gum-floo'ers an' ither abominations. Na, nor yet Bible clesses! Faith, set them up! It wad better become them to sit them doon wi' their Bibles in their laps and the grace o' God in their hearts, an' tak' a lesson to themsel's oot o' Paaal!"
Here Willie dusted the pulpit cushions, vigorously shaking them as a terrier does a rat, and then carefully brushing them all in one direction, in order that, as he said, "the fell may a' lie the yae way."
Willie was no eye servant. No spider took hold with her hands and was in the Palace of Willie's King. Dust had no habitation there, and if a man did not clean his boots on the mat before entering, Willie went to him personally and told him his probable chances of a happy hereafter. These were but few and evil.
Then having got the "shine" to fall as he wanted it, and the dark purple velvet overhang, pride of his heart, to sit to a nicety, Willie lifted up the heavy tassels, and at the same time resumed the thread of his discourse, standing there in the pulpit with the very port of a minister, and in his speech a point and pith that was all his own.
"Aye, Paul," (he always pronounced it Paaal)—"aye, Paaal, it's a peety ye never marriet and left nae faim'ly that we ken o'. For we hae sair need o' ye in thae days. But ye kenned better than to taigle yersel' wi' silly lasses. It was you that bade the young weemen to be keepers at hame—nae Bible clesses for Paaal—na, na!
"And you mind Peter—oh, Peter was juist as soond on gum-floo'ers an' weemen's falderals as Paaal, 'Whose adorning, let it not be the outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and wearing of gold, and putting on of apparel, but the ornament of a meek and quiet speerit——'"