Its first appearance in book form was in Kipling's first collection of short stories, Plain Tales from the Hills (1888); it was first published in the Civil and Military Gazette on November 20, 1886.
(It is necessary to say how Mrs. Hauksbee can be 'nice', after the story "Three and - an Extra" which introduced her to Kipling's readers as a woman predatory on another's husband.)
He is callow, and 'trusts his own judgement': and, at 24, becomes "bound hand and foot to Mrs. Reiver's 'rickshaw wheels" - that is a hyperbolic way of saying that she dominates him so that he is at her whim.
She fights Mrs. Reiver in "the Seven Weeks' War", and finally wins by talking to him "after the manner of a mother".
He leaves the army and returns to lead a happy life farming in England.