Love in Chief by R.K. Weekes — Read

There were eight young Laurensons, of whom the two youngest were Laurence Lionel, commonly known as Lal, and Angela. Angela was the only girl, and had been spoilt, or rather given her own way; but then, that way was always exemplary. She had done her best for all her brothers, she said, with pathos, yet Bertie still remained a dude and Harold still a fool, and with none of them had she succeeded save with Lal, who was a pattern of virtue. Angela bade him work for the army, enter Woolwich, and pass into the Royal Engineers; he obeyed her by coming out first in his batch. After this they had a slight difference of opinion, for Lal chose to enter the Royal Artillery and would not be dissuaded from it by all the accusations of laziness which his guardian angel hurled at his head. She did not know, and nobody else noticed, that a certain poor country parson's son, who after patient toil had attained only the eighteenth place on the list, was by Lal's retirement elevated among the lucky seventeen to be drafted into the Engineers -- the only regiment where a penniless man can live on his pay. Lal's choice remained a puzzle to Angela. But Lal was queer; she was sure that her deepest soundings never quite touched bottom.

Lal entered at once upon a distinguished career. During the South African war he was twice mentioned in despatches, received the Distinguished Service Order, and was never taken prisoner: three grand distinctions which made the guardian angel proudly preen her wings. She had cried herself to sleep every night of the first week after he sailed. In Somaliland he got enteric and was wounded in the foot; he was invalided home amid a blaze of glory with six months' sick leave and another medal to hang beside the two which a liberal Conservative War Office had already bestowed for his services in Africa. He sustained the character of wounded hero with fortitude, but without enjoyment: Lal was modest. Admiration silenced him; he had been more open with Bernard, a stranger who did not know him, than he had ever been with his sister. He made a vaguely impressive figure at Ella Merton's garden-parties: a quiet, languid, fair-haired young aristocrat, always very correctly dressed, always courteous, always reticent. Maud Prideaux, who had names for everybody, hit off the Laurensons' peculiarities to a nicety when she christened Angela _On dit_ and her brother _Cela va sans dire_.