<p><strong>My name is Stumps, and my mistress is rather a nice little girl; but she has her faults, like most people. </strong>I myself, as it happens, am wonderfully free from faults. Among my mistress's faults is what I may call a lack of dignity, joined to a desire to make other people undignified too.</p><p>You will hardly believe that, before I had belonged to her a month, she had made me learn to dance and to jump. I am a very respectable dachshund, of cobby build, and jumping is the very last exercise I should have taken to of my own accord. But when Miss Daisy said, "Now jump, Stumps; there's a darling!" and held out her little arms, I could not well refuse. For, after all, the child is my mistress.</p><p>I never could understand why the cat was not taught to dance . . .</p><p>That's the start to "Tinker," Nesbit's first Doggy Tale. Included in this tome of pets -- "Too Clever by Half," "The White Persian," "A Powerful Friend," "A Silly Question," "The Selfish Pussy," "Meddlesome Pussy," and "Nine Lives." Besides "Tinker," there are only <em>five</em> other tales about dogs, "Rats!," "The Tables Turned," "A Noble Dog," "The Dyer's Dog," and "The Vain Setter." No fair! We're dog people, ourselves. Less cats! More dogs!</p>
