Explore "The Private Account" by Rudyard Kipling on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
_Scene_: Three and a half miles across the Border -- Kohat way. _Time_: The edge of sunset. Single room in a stone built tower house reached by a ladder from the ground. An Afghan woman, wrapped in a red cotton quilt, squats on the floor trimming a small kerosene lamp. Her husband, an elderly Afghan with a purple dyed beard, lies on a native cot, covered by a striped blue and white cloth. He is wounded in the knee and hip. A Government rifle leans against the cot. Their son, aged twenty, kneels beside him, unfolding a letter. As the mother places the lighted lamp in a recess in the wall, the son picks up the rifle and pushes the half-opened door home with the butt. The wife passes her husband a filled pipe of tobacco, blowing on the charcoal ball in the bowl.
SON [_as he unfolds letter_]. It is from France. His Regiment is still there.