Star of India

								

Court for a considerable period, and now here was Maud, who when Stella
last saw her had been in short petticoats with her hair down her back,
transformed into a young lady; she had a curled fringe, bangles and
puffed sleeves; her dress touched the ground, she had a waist, and her
hat, of a fashionable sailor shape, was set well to the back of her
head. And all this though she was no older than her former playmate,
Stella Carrington, whose skirts even now barely reached her ankles,
whose hair still hung in a plait, whose hat, in her own opinion, was
more suited to a child in a perambulator than to a girl of seventeen. No
wonder she felt stifled, cramped! She realised why the memory of her
tortures in the old box-like pew had recurred to her mind; and then
suddenly the hymn that she knew so well and had sung on such countless
Sundays, paying no special heed to the words, struck her as the acme of
hypocrisy. She ceased singing, amazed that the recognition had not come
to her sooner. Surely whoever was responsible for the wording of this
hymn could never have known the tedium for a young person of living with
a stony-hearted grandmother and two maiden aunts in a small village
where nothing ever happened; the author must have belonged to people
like the Verralls, who were, of course, satisfied with their "lot," and
did not want to change it; people who could "dare" do anything they
pleased. If she, Stella Carrington, could choose her lot at this moment,
she would change places with Maud Verrall; and she wondered how Maud
would feel if she found herself forced to accept the lot of Stella
Carrington! Would Maud still humbly proclaim that she would not change
it even if she might?...
Only when Aunt Augusta, regarding her severely, touched her arm did
Stella discover that the hymn was ended; that the congregation was
settling down for the sermon. She sank to her seat, blushing, abashed.
Summer had set in early that year, and the sun poured through the
stained glass window subscribed for by the parish to a former Squire
Verrall, casting kaleidoscopic patterns of purple and crimson on to
grandmamma's brown silk bonnet; a premature bumble-bee droned and bumped
up and down the panes, the atmosphere felt airless, and Aunt Ellen
sniffed elegantly at her green salts-bottle. Stella grew drowsy; she
could not attend to the sermon, and her thoughts strayed on in
confusion.... Would Canon Grass, the vicar, dare to change his lot if he
might? Perhaps he would like to change Mrs. Grass, who was older than
himself, for the pretty visitor who was one of The Court party in the
chancel pew.... And how about Mrs. Daw, who was so artistic, and
considered her talents wasted in her position as wife to a country
doctor; who complained that no one in the village really understood or
appreciated "Art".... How much happier Mrs. Daw would be in London had
she the opportunity of changing her lot--of converting her husband into