[1] "Thrown Away" tells of an unnamed 'Boy', a product of the English "sheltered life system" that Kipling abhors: "Let a puppy eat the soap in the bath-room or chew a newly-blacked boot.
He chews and chuckles until, by and by, he finds out that blacking and Old Brown Windsor make him very sick; so he argues that soap and boots are not wholesome.
If he had been kept away from boots, and soap, and big dogs till he came to the trinity full-grown and with developed teeth, just consider how fearfully sick and thrashed he would be!
"This Boy — the tale is as old as the hills — came out and took all things seriously": he quarrels, and remembers disagreements; he gambles; he flirts, and is too serious; he loses money and health; he is reprimanded by his Colonel.
The story has keen psychological observations (the conspirators' combined laughter and choking fits as they prepare their lies) and telling narrative detail.