“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?’”