My mother appeared to think that I had grown lazy since I recovered from my attack of influenza. She continually pressed me to take exercise and invented a hundred different excuses for getting me out of doors. When I saw that her heart was really set on seeing me walk I did what I could to gratify her. I promised to go over to the rectory after luncheon on the very next fine day. There seemed no prospect of a fine day for at least a month, and so I felt tolerably safe in making the promise. But there is nothing so unreliable as weather, especially Irish weather. I had no sooner made my promise than the clouds began to break. At twelve o’clock it stopped raining. At one the sun was shining with provoking brilliancy. I tried to ignore the change and at luncheon complained bitterly of the cold. My mother, by way of reply, remarked on the cheerful brightness of the sunshine. She did not, in so many words, ask me to redeem my promise, but I knew what was in her mind.

“All right,” I said, “I’m going. I shall put on a pair of thick boots. I should prefer driving, but of course——”

“Walking will be much better for you.” “That’s just what I was going to say, I shall run a certain amount of risk, of course. I may drop down exhausted. I am still very weak; weaker than I look. Or I may get overheated. Or I may get too cold.”

My mother, curiously enough, for she was very fond of me, did not seem frightened.

“McMeekin told me,” I went on, “that a relapse after influenza is nearly always fatal. However, I have made my will and I fully intend to walk.”

I did walk as far as the gate lodge and about a hundred yards beyond it. It was not in any way my fault that I got no farther. I was actually beginning to like walking and should certainly have gone on if Lalage had not stopped me. She and Hilda were in the Canon’s pony trap, driving furiously. Lalage held the reins. Hilda clung with both hands to the side of the trap. The pony was galloping hard and foaming at the mouth. I stepped aside when I saw them coming and climbed more than halfway up a large wooden gate which happened to be near me at the time. The road was very muddy and I did not want to be splashed from head to foot. Besides, there was a risk of being run over. When Lalage caught sight of me she pulled up the pony with a jerk.

“We were just going to see you,” she said. “It’s great luck catching you like this. What’s simony?”

I climbed down from the gate, slowly, so as to get time to think. The question surprised me and I was not prepared to give, offhand, a definition of simony.

“I don’t know,” I said at last, “but I think, in fact I’m nearly sure, that it is some kind of ecclesiastical offence, perhaps a heresy. Were you coming to see me in order to find out?”

“Yes, That’s the reason we were in such a terrific hurry.”

“Quite so,” I said. “I was a little surprised at first to see you galloping, but now I understand.”

“Would it,” said Lalage, “be simony to cheek an Archdeacon?”

“It might. It very well might. Is that what you’ve done, Hilda?”

“I didn’t,” said Hilda.

“You did, just as much as me,” said Lalage, “and it was to you he said it, so he evidently meant you. Not that either of us did cheek him really.”

“Why didn’t you ask your father?” I said. “He’s a Canon and he’d be almost sure to know.”

“I didn’t like to speak to him about it until I knew what it was. It might turn out to be something that I wouldn’t care to talk to him about, something—you know the kind of thing I mean.”

“Improper?”

“Not quite so bad as that, but the same sort.”

“RisquÉ? But surely the Archdeacon wouldn’t say anything the least——”

“You never know,” said Lalage.

“And if it had been that Hilda would never have done it.”

“I didn’t,” said Hilda.

“Of course if it’s nothing worse than ordinary cheek,” said Lalage, “I shouldn’t have minded talking to father about it in the least. But I don’t see how it could be that, for we didn’t cheek him. Did we, Hilda?”

“I didn’t,” said Hilda.

“If there’d been anything of the other sort about it—and it sounds rather like that, doesn’t it?”

“Very,” I said; “but you can’t trust sounds.”

“Anyhow, we thought it safer to come to you,” said Lalage.

“That was nice of you both.”

“I don’t see anything nice about it one way or the other,” said Lalage. “We simply thought that if it was anything—anything not quite ladylike, you’d be sure to know all about it.”

I do not know why Lalage should saddle me with a reputation of this kind. I have never done anything to deserve it. My feelings were hurt.

“As it turns out not to be improper,” I said, “there’s no use coming to me.”

I spoke severely, in cold tones, with great stiffness of manner. Lalage was not in the least snubbed.

“Have you any book in the house that would tell you?” she asked.

“I have a dictionary.”

“Stupid of me,” said Lalage, “not to have thought of a dictionary, and frightfully stupid of you, Hilda. You ought to have thought of it. You were always fonder of dictionaries than I was. There are two or three of them in the rectory. We might have gone straight there and looked it out. We’ll go now.”

“If it’s a really pressing matter,” I said, “you’ll save a few minutes by coming back with me. You’re fully a quarter of a mile from the rectory this minute.”

“Right,” said Lalage. “Let down the back of the trap and hop up. We’ll drive you.”

I let down the seat and then hopped. I hopped quite a long way before I succeeded in getting up. For Lalage started before I was nearly ready and urged the pony to a gallop at once. When we reached the house I sent the unfortunate animal round to the stable yard, with orders that he was to be carefully rubbed down and then walked about until he was cool. Lalage, followed by Hilda and afterward by me, went into the library.

“Now,” she said, “trot out your best dictionary.”

I collected five, one of them an immense work in four volumes, and laid them in a row on the table.

“Hilda,” said Lalage, “look it out.”

Hilda chose, the largest dictionary and after a short hesitation picked up the volume labelled “Jab to Sli.” She stared at the word without speaking for some time after she found it. Lalage and I looked over her shoulder and, when we saw the definition, stared too. It was Lalage who read it out in the end:

“Simony from Simon Magus, Acts VIII. The crime of buying or selling ecclesiastical preferment or the corrupt presentation of any one to an ecclesiastical benefice for money or reward.”

I own that I was puzzled. Lalage is a person of great originality and daring, but I did not see how even she could possibly have committed simony. She and Hilda looked at each other. There was an expression of genuine astonishment on their faces.

“Do you think,” said Lalage at last, “that the Archdeacon could by any chance have gone suddenly dotty in the head?”

“He was quite sane the day before yesterday,” I said. “I was talking to him.”

“Well, then, I don’t understand it. Whatever else we did we didn’t do that or anything like it. Did we, Hilda?”

“I didn’t,” said Hilda, who seemed as unwilling as ever to answer for Lalage.

“For one thing,” said Lalage, “we hadn’t got any ecclesiastical preferments to sell and we hadn’t any money to buy them, so we couldn’t have simonied even if we’d wanted to. But he certainly said we had. Just tell exactly what he did say, Hilda. It was to you he said it.”

Hilda, with a very fair imitation of the Archdeacon’s manner, repeated his words:

“‘Young lady, are you aware that this is the sin of simony?’”

I took the dictionary in my hand.

“There’s a bit more,” I said, “that you didn’t read. Perhaps there is some secondary meaning in the word. I’ll go on: ‘By stat: 31 Elizabeth C. VII. Severe penalties are enacted against this crime. In the church of Scotland simonaical practices——’ Well, we’re not in Scotland anyhow, so we needn’t go into that. I wonder if stat: 31 Elizabeth C. VII runs in this country. Some don’t; but it sounds to me rather as if it would. If it does, you’re in a nasty fix, Lalage; you and Hilda. Severe penalties can hardly mean less than imprisonment with hard labour.

“But we didn’t do it,” said Lalage.

“The Archdeacon appears to think you did,” I said, “both of you, especially Hilda. You must have done something. You’d better tell me exactly what occurred from the beginning of the interview until the end. I’ll try and pick out what struck the Archdeacon as simonaical. I don’t want to see either of you run in for severe penalties if we can help it. I expect the best thing will be to repent and apologize at once.”

“Repent of what?” said Lalage.

“That’s what I want to find out. Begin at the beginning now and give me the whole story.”

“We drove over this morning,” said Lalage, “to see the Archdeacon. I didn’t want to go a bit, for the Archdeacon is particularly horrid when he’s nice, as he is just at present. But Selby-Harrison said we ought.”

“Is Selby-Harrison here?”

“No. He wrote from Dublin. He’s been looking up the subject of bishops in the college library so that we’d know exactly what we ought to do.”

“He should have looked up simony first thing. I can’t forgive Selby-Harrison for letting you in for those severe penalties.”

“There wasn’t a bit of harm in what he said. It was nearly all out of the Bible and the ancient Fathers of the Church and Councils and things. It couldn’t have been simony. You have his letter, haven’t you, Hilda? Read it out.”

Hilda opened the small bag she always carries and took out the letter. It looked to me a very long one.

“I don’t know,” I said, “that Selby-Harrison’s letter really matters unless you read it out to the Archdeacon.”

“We didn’t get the chance,” said Lalage, “although we meant to.”

“Then you needn’t read it to me.”

“We must. Otherwise you won’t know why we went to see the Archdeacon.”

“Couldn’t you give me in a few words a general idea of the contents of the letter?”

“You do that, Hilda,” said Lalage.

“It was nothing,” said Hilda, “but a list of the things a bishop ought to be.”

“Qualifications for the office,” said Lalage.

“And you went over to the Archdeacon to find out whether he came up to the standard. I’m beginning to understand.”

“I thought at the time,” said Hilda, “that it was rather cheek.”

“It was,” I said, “but it doesn’t seem to me, so far, to amount to actual simony.”

“It was a perfectly natural and straightforward thing to do,” said Lalage. “How could we possibly support the Archdeacon in the election unless we’d satisfied ourselves that he had the proper qualifications?”

“Anyhow,” I said, “whether the Archdeacon mistook it for cheek or not—and I can quite understand that he might—it wasn’t simony.”

“That’s just what bothers us,” said Lalage. “Do you think that dictionary of yours could possibly be wrong?”

“It might,” I said. “Let’s try another.”

Hilda tried three others. The wording of their definitions varied, but they were all in substantial agreement with the first.

“There must,” I said, “have been something in the questions which you put to the Archdeacon which suggested simony to his mind. What did you ask him?”

“I didn’t ask him anything. I intended to but I hadn’t time. He was on top of us with his old simony before I opened my mouth.”

“You did say one thing,” said Hilda.

“Then that must have been it,” I said.

“It wasn’t in the least simonious,” said Lalage. “In fact it wasn’t anything at all. It was merely a polite way of beginning the conversation.”

“All the same,” I said. “It was simony. It must have been, for there was nothing else. What was it?”

“It wasn’t of any importance,” said Lalage. “I simply said—just in the way you might say you hoped his cold was better without meaning anything in particular—that I supposed if he was elected bishop he’d make father archdeacon.”

“Ah!” I said.

“He flew out at that straight away. Rather ridiculous of him, wasn’t it? He can’t be both bishop and archdeacon, so he needn’t try. He must give up the second job to some one or other. I’d have thought he’d have seen that at once.”

I referred to the dictionary.

“‘Or the corrupt presentation of any one to an eccelesiastical benefice for money or reward.’ That’s where he has you, Lalage. You were offering to present him——”

“I wasn’t. How could I?”

“He thought you were, any how. And the reward in this case evidently was that your father should be made into an archdeacon.”

“That’s the greatest nonsense I ever heard. It wouldn’t be a reward. Father would simply hate it.”

“The Archdeacon couldn’t be expected to understand that. Having held the office for so long himself he naturally regards it as highly desirable.”

“What about the penalties?” said Hilda nervously.

“By far the best thing you can do,” I said, “is to grovel profusely. If you both cast ashes on your heads and let the tears run down your cheeks——”

“If the Archdeacon is such a fool as you’re trying to make out,” said Lalage, “I shall simply write to him and say that nothing on earth would induce me to allow my father to parade the country dressed up in an apron and a pair of tight black gaiters.”

“If you say things like that to him,” I said, “he’ll exact the penalties. See stat: 31 Elizabeth C. VII. You may not mind, but Hilda’s mother will.”

“Yes,” said Hilda, “she’ll be frightfully angry.”

At this moment my mother came into the library.

“Thank goodness,” said Lalage, “we have some one at last who can talk sense.”

My mother looked questioningly at me. I offered her an explanation of the position in the smallest possible number of words.

“The Archdeacon,” I said, “is going to put Lalage and Hilda into prison for simony.”

“He can’t,” said Lalage, “for we didn’t do it.”

“They did,” I said, “both of them. They offered to present the Archdeacon corruptly to an ecclesiastical benefice for a reward.”

“It wasn’t a reward.”

“Lalage,” said my mother, “have you been meddling with this bishopric election?”

“I simply tried,” said Lalage, “to find out whether he was properly qualified.”

“You did more than that,” I said; “you tried to get a reward.”

“If you take my advice——” said my mother.

“I will,” said Lalage, “and so will Hilda.”

That threatening statute of Queen Elizabeth’s must have frightened Lalage. I never before knew her so meek.

“Then leave the question of the Archdeacon’s qualifications,” said my mother, “to those who have to elect him.”

“Not to me,” I said hurriedly. “I couldn’t work through that list of Selby-Harrison’s. Try my uncle. Try Lord Thormanby. He’ll like it.”

“There’s one thing——” said Lalage.

“Leave it to the synod,” said my mother.

“Or to Lord Thormanby,” I said.

“Very well,” said Lalage. “I will. But perhaps he won’t care to go into it, and if he doesn’t I shall have to act myself.”

“He will,” I said. “He has a perfectly tremendous sense of responsibility.”

“And now,” said my mother, “come along, all of you, to the drawing-room and have tea.”

“Is it all right?” said Hilda anxiously to me as we left the room.

“Quite,” I said; “there’ll be no prosecution. My mother can do anything she likes with the Archdeacon, just as she does with Lalage. He’ll not enforce a single penalty.”

“She’s wonderful,” said Hilda.

I quite agreed. She is. Even Miss Pettigrew could not do as much. It was more by good luck than anything else that she succeeded in luring Lalage away from Ballygore.