Once a little boy was given a birthday present of a set of twenty-five tin soldiers. All the soldiers had shiny red and blue uniforms and gleaming tin muskets.

However, one of the soldiers stood out from the rest because he had only one leg. In the same nursery there were many other toys. There were wax puppets and jack-in-the-boxes. There were playing cards and porcelain dolls. There were colour pencils and bouncing balls. There also lived a beautiful, dancing ballerina doll who stood at the entrance to a cardboard castle which had a small mirror for a lake in front of it.

She balanced herself on one leg so well that the tin soldier thought that she had only one leg. She wore a blue dress with a scarf. The scarf had a tinsel rose pinned on it in the centre. The tin soldier admired the ballerina from .a distance and soon fell in love with her. “But she is...