Alan Alexander Miln. The house at Pooh Corner
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Original of this document is at
http://www.hiiumaa.ee/puhhiraamat/part2/pooh2_0.html
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DEDICATION
You gave me Christopher Robin, and then
You breathed new life in Pooh.
Whatever of each has left my pen
Goes homing back to you.
My book is ready, and comes to greet
The mother it longs to see --
It would be my present to you, my sweet,
If it weren't your gift to me.
AN Introduction is to introduce people, but Christopher
Robin and his friends, who have already been introduced to you,
are now going to say Good-bye. So this is the opposite. When we
asked Pooh what the opposite of an Introduction was, he said
"The what of a what?" which didn't help us as much as we had
hoped, but luckily Owl kept his head and told us that the Opposite
of an Introduction, my dear Pooh, was a Contradiction; and, as
he is very good at long words, I am sure that that's what it is.
Why we are having a Contradiction is because last week
when Christopher Robin said to me, "What about that story you
were going to tell me about what happened to Pooh when----" I
happened to say very quickly, "What about nine times a hundred
and seven ?" And when we had done that one, we had one about
cows going through a gate at two a minute, and there are three
hundred in the field, so how many are left after an hour and a
half? We find these very exciting, and when we have been
excited quite enough, we curl up and go to sleep . . . and
Pooh, sitting wakeful a little longer on his chair by our pil
low, thinks Grand Thoughts to himself about Nothing, until he,
too, closes his eyes and nods his head, and follows us on tip-
toe into the Forest. There, still, we have magic adventures,
more wonderful than any I have told you about; but now, when we
wake up in the morning, they are gone before we can catch hold
of them. How did the last one begin? "One day when Pooh was
walk ing in the Forest, there were one hundred and seven cows
on a gate . . ." No, you see, we have lost it. It was the best,
I think. Well, here are some of the other ones, all that we
shall remember now. But, of course, it isn't really Good-bye,
because the Forest will always be there . . . and anybody who
is Friendly with Bears can find it.
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Chapter I. In which a house is built
at Pooh Corner for Eeyore
ONE day when Pooh Bear had nothing else to do, he thought
he would do something, so he went round to Piglet's house to
see what Piglet was doing. It was still snowing as he stumped
over the white forest track, and he expected to find Piglet
warming his toes in front of his fire, but to his surprise he
saw that the door was open, and the more he looked inside the
more Piglet wasn't there.
"He's out," said Pooh sadly. "That's what it is. He's
not in. I shall have to go a fast Thinking Walk by myself.
Bother!"
But first he thought that he would knock very loudly
just to make quite sure . . . and while he waited for Piglet
not to answer, he jumped up and down to keep warm, and a hum
came suddenly into his head, which seemed to him a Good Hum,
such as is Hummed Hopefully to Others.
The more it snows
(Tiddely pom),
The more it goes
(Tiddely pom),
The more it goes
(Tiddely pom)
On snowing.
And nobody knows
(Tiddely pom),
How cold my toes
(Tiddely pom),
How cold my toes
(Tiddely pom),
Are growing.
"So what I'll do," said Pooh, "is I'll do this. I'll
just go home first and see what the time is, and perhaps I'll
put a muffler round my neck, and then I'll go and see Eeyore
and sing it to him."
He hurried back to his own house; and his mind was so
busy on the way with the hum that he was getting ready for
Eeyore that, when he suddenly saw Piglet sitting in his best
arm-chair, he could only stand there rubbing his head and
wondering whose house he was in.
"Hallo, Piglet," he said. "I thought you were out."
"No," said Piglet, "it's you who were out, Pooh."
"So it was," said Pooh. "I knew one of us was."
He looked up at his clock, which had stopped at five
minutes to eleven some weeks ago.
"Nearly eleven o'clock," said Pooh happily. "You're
just in time for a little smackerel of something," and he put
his head into the cupboard. "And then we'll go out, Piglet, and
sing my song to Eeyore."
"Which song, Pooh?"
"The one we're going to sing to Eeyore," explained
Pooh.
The clock was still saying five minutes to eleven when
Pooh and Piglet set out on their way half an hour later. The
wind had dropped, and the snow, tired of rushing round in
circles trying to catch itself up, now fluttered gently down
until it found a place on which to rest, and sometimes the
place was Pooh's nose and sometimes it wasn't, and in a little
while Piglet was wearing a white muffler round his neck and
feeling more snowy behind the ears than he had ever felt
before.
"Pooh," he said at last, and a little timidly, because
he didn't want Pooh to think he was Giving In, "I was just
wondering. How would it be if we went home now and practised
your song, and then sang it to Eeyore to-morrow--or--or the
next day, when we happen to see him?"
"That's a very good idea, Piglet," said Pooh. "We'll
practise it now as we go along. But it's no good going home to
practise it, because it's a special Outdoor Song which Has To
Be Sung In The Snow."
"Are you sure?" asked Piglet anxiously.
"Well, you'll see, Piglet, when you listen. Because
this is how it begins. The more it snows, tiddely pom----"
"Tiddely what?" said Piglet.
"Pom," said Pooh. "I put that in to make it more hummy.
The more it goes, tiddely pom, the more----"
"Didn't you say snows?"
"Yes, but that was before."
"Before the tiddely pom?"
"It was a different tiddely pom," said Pooh, feeling
rather muddled now. "I'll sing it to you properly and then
you'll see."
So he sang it again.
The more it
SNOWS-tiddely-pom,
The more it
GOES-tiddely-pom
The more it
GOES-tiddely-pom
On
Snowing
And nobody
KNOWS-tiddely-pom,
How cold my
TOES-tiddely-pom
How cold my
TOES-tiddely-pom
Are
Growing.
He sang it like that, which is much the best way of
singing it, and when he had finished, he waited for Piglet to
say that, of all the Outdoor Hums for Snowy Weather he had ever
heard, this was the best. And, after thinking the matter out
carefully, Piglet said:
"Pooh," he said solemnly, "it isn't the toes so much as
the ears."
By this time they were getting near Eeyore's Gloomy
Place, which was where he lived, and as it was still very snowy
behind Piglet's ears, and he was getting tired of it, they
turned into a little pine wood, and sat down on the gate which
led into it. They were out of the snow now, but it was very
cold, and to keep themselves warm they sang Pooh's song right
through six times, Piglet doing the tiddely-poms and Pooh doing
the rest of it, and both of them thumping on the top of the
gate with pieces of stick at the proper places. And in a little
while they felt much warmer, and were able to talk again.
"I've been thinking," said Pooh, "and what I've been
thinking is this. I've been thinking about Eeyore."
"What about Eeyore?"
"Well, poor Eeyore has nowhere to live."
"Nor he has," said Piglet.
"You have a house, Piglet, and I have a house, and they
are very good houses. And Christopher Robin has a house, and
Owl and Kanga and Rabbit have houses, and even Rabbit's friends
and relations have houses or somethings, but poor Eeyore has
nothing. So what I've been thinking is: Let's build him a
house."
"That," said Piglet, "is a Grand Idea. Where shall we
build it?"
"We will build it here," said Pooh, "just by this wood,
out of the wind, because this is where I thought of it. And we
will call this Pooh Corner. And we will build an Eeyore House
with sticks at Pooh Corner for Eeyore."
"There was a heap of sticks on the other side of the
wood," said Piglet. "I saw them. Lots and lots. All piled up."
"Thank you, Piglet," said Pooh. "What you have just
said will be a Great Help to us, and because of it I could call
this place Poohanpiglet Corner if Pooh Corner didn't sound
better, which it does, being smaller and more like a corner.
Come along."
So they got down off the gate and went round to the
other side of the wood to fetch the sticks.
Christopher Robin had spent the morning indoors going
to Africa and back, and he had just got off the boat and was
wondering what it was like outside, when who should come
knocking at the door but Eeyore.
"Hallo, Eeyore," said Christopher Robin, as he opened
the door and came out. "How are you?"
"It's snowing still," said Eeyore gloomily.
"So it is."
"And freezing."
"Is it?"
"Yes," said Eeyore. "However," he said, brightening up
a little, "we haven't had an earthquake lately."
"What's the matter, Eeyore?"
"Nothing, Christopher Robin. Nothing important. I
suppose you haven't seen a house or what-not anywhere about?"
"What sort of a house?"
"Just a house."
"Who lives there?"
"I do. At least I thought I did. But I suppose I don't.
After all, we can't all have houses."
"But, Eeyore, I didn't know--I always thought----"
"I don't know how it is, Christopher Robin, but what
with all this snow and one thing and another, not to mention
icicles and such-like, it isn't so Hot in my field about three
o'clock in the morning as some people think it is. It isn't
Close, if you know what I mean--not so as to be uncomfortable.
It isn't Stuffy. In fact, Christopher Robin," he went on in a
loud whisper, "quite-between-ourselves-and- don't-tell-anybody,
it's Cold."
"Oh, Eeyore!"
"And I said to myself: The others will be sorry if I'm
getting myself all cold. They haven't got Brains, any of them,
only grey fluff that's blown into their heads by mistake, and
they don't Think, but if it goes on snowing for another six
weeks or so, one of them will begin to say to himself: 'Eeyore
can't be so very much too Hot about three o'clock in the
morning.' And then it will Get About. And they'll be Sorry."
"Oh, Eeyore!" said Christopher Robin, feeling very
sorry already.
"I don't mean you, Christopher Robin. You're different.
So what it all comes to is that I built myself a house down by
my little wood."
"Did you really? How exciting!"
"The really exciting part," said Eeyore in his most
melancholy voice, "is that when I left it this morning it was
there, and when I came back it wasn't. Not at all, very
natural, and it was only Eeyore's house. But still I just
wondered."
Christopher Robin didn't stop to wonder. He was already
back in his house, putting on his waterproof hat, his
waterproof boots and his waterproof macintosh as fast as he
could.
"We'll go and look for it at once," he called out to
Eeyore.
"Sometimes," said Eeyore, "when people have quite
finished taking a person's house, there are one or two bits
which they don't want and are rather glad for the person to
take back, if you know what I mean. So I thought if we just
went "
"Come on," said Christopher Robin, and off they
hurried, and in a very little time they got to the corner of
the field by the side of the pine-wood, where Eeyore's house
wasn't any longer.
"There!" said Eeyore. "Not a stick of it left! Of
course, I've still got all this snow to do what I like with.
One mustn't complain."
But Christopher Robin wasn't listening to Eeyore, he
was listening to something else.
"Can't you hear it?" he asked.
"What is it? Somebody laughing?"
"Listen."
They both listened . . . and they heard a deep gruff
voice saying in a singing voice that the more it snowed the
more it went on snowing, and a small high voice tiddely-pomming
in between.
"It's Pooh," said Christopher Robin excitedly....
"Possibly," said Eeyore.
"And Piglet!" said Christopher Robin excitedly.
"Probably," said Eeyore. "What we want is a Trained
Bloodhound."
The words of the song changed suddenly.
"We've finished our HOUSE!" sang the gruff voice.
"Tiddely pom!" sang the squeaky one.
"It's a beautiful HOUSE . . ."
"Tiddely pom . . ."
"I wish it were MINE . . ,"
"Tiddely pom . . ."
"Pooh!" shouted Christopher Robin. . . .
The singers on the gate stopped suddenly.
"It's Christopher Robin!" said Pooh eagerly.
"He's round by the place where we got all those sticks
from," said Piglet.
"Come on," said Pooh.
They climbed down their gate and hurried round the
corner of the wood, Pooh making welcoming noises all the way.
"Why, here is Eeyore," said Pooh, when he had finished
hugging Christopher Robin, and he nudged Piglet, and Piglet
nudged him, and they thought to themselves what a lovely
surprise they had got ready.
"Hallo, Eeyore."
"Same to you, Pooh Bear, and twice on Thursdays," said
Eeyore gloomily.
Before Pooh could say: "Why Thursdays?" Christopher
Robin began to explain the sad story of Eeyore's Lost House.
And Pooh and Piglet listened, and their eyes seemed to get
bigger and bigger.
"Where did you say it was?" asked Pooh.
"Just here," said Eeyore.
"Made of sticks?"
"Yes."
"Oh!" said Piglet.
"What?" said Eeyore.
"I just said 'Oh!'" said Piglet nervously. And so as to
seem quite at ease he hummed Tiddely-pom once or twice in a
what-shall-we-do-now kind of way.
"You're sure it was a house?" said Pooh. "I mean,
you're sure the house was just here?"
"Of course I am," said Eeyore. And he murmured to
himself, "No brain at all, some of them."
"Why, what's the matter, Pooh?" asked Christopher
Robin.
"Well," said Pooh . . . "The fact is," said Pooh . . .
"Well, the fact is," said Pooh . . . "You see," said Pooh . . .
"It's like this," said Pooh, and something seemed to tell him
that he wasn't explaining very well, and he nudged Piglet
again.
"It's like this," said Piglet quickly.... "Only
warmer," he added after deep thought.
"What's warmer?"
"The other side of the wood, where Eeyore's house is."
"My house?" said Eeyore. "My house was here."
"No," said Piglet firmly. "The other side of the wood."
"Because of being warmer," said Pooh.
"But I ought to know?"
"Come and look," said Piglet simply, and he led the
way.
"There wouldn't be two houses," said Pooh. "Not so
close together."
They came round the corner, and there was Eeyore's
house, looking as comfy as anything.
"There you are," said Piglet.
"Inside as well as outside," said Pooh proudly.
Eeyore went inside . . . and came out again.
"It's a remarkable thing," he said. "It is my house,
and I built it where I said I did, so the wind must have blown
it here. And the wind blew it right over the wood, and blew it
down here, and here it is as good as ever. In fact, better in
places."
"Much better," said Pooh and Piglet together.
"It just shows what can be done by taking a little
trouble," said Eeyore. "Do you see, Pooh ? Do you see, Piglet?
Brains first and then Hard Work. Look at it! That's the way to
build a house," said Eeyore proudly.
So they left him in it; and Christopher Robin went back
to lunch with his friends Pooh and Piglet, and on the way they
told him of the Awful Mistake they had made. And when he had
finished laughing, they all sang the Outdoor Song for Snowy
Weather the rest of the way home, Piglet, who was still not
quite sure of his voice, putting in the tiddely-poms again.
"And I know it seems easy," said Piglet to himself,
"but it isn't every one who could do it."
Chapter II. In which Tigger comes
to the forest and has breakfast
WINNIE-THE-POOH woke up suddenly in the middle of the
night and listened. Then he got out of bed, and lit his candle,
and stumped across the room to see if anybody was trying to get
into his honey-cupboard, and they weren't, so he stumped back
again, blew out his candle, and got into bed. Then he heard the
noise again.
"Is that you, Piglet?" he said. But it wasn't.
"Come in, Christopher Robin," he said.
But Christopher Robin didn't.
"Tell me about it to-morrow, Eeyore," said Pooh
sleepily.
But the noise went on.
"Worraworraworraworraworra," said Whatever-it-was, and
Pooh found that he wasn't asleep after all.
"What can it be?" he thought. "There are lots of noises
in the Forest, but this is a different one. It isn't a growl,
and it isn't a purr, and it isn't a bark, and it isn't the
noise-you-make-before- beginning-a-piece-of-poetry, but it's a
noise of some kind, made by a strange animal. And he's making
it outside my door. So I shall get up and ask him not to do
it."
He got out of bed and opened his front door.
"Hallo!" said Pooh, in case there was anything outside.
"Hallo!" said Whatever-it-was.
"Oh!" said Pooh. "Hallo!"
"Hallo!"
"Oh, there you are!" said Pooh. "Hallo!"
"Hallo!" said the Strange Animal, wondering how long
this was going on.
Pooh was just going to say "Hallo!" for the fourth time
when he thought that he wouldn't, so he said, "Who is it?"
instead.
"Me," said a voice.
"Oh!" said Pooh. "Well, come here."
So Whatever-it-was came here, and in the light of the
candle he and Pooh looked at each other.
"I'm Pooh," said Pooh.
"I'm Tigger," said Tigger.
"Oh!" said Pooh, for he had never seen an animal like
this before. "Does Christopher Robin know about you?"
"Of course he does," said Tigger.
"Well," said Pooh, "it's the middle of the night, which
is a good time for going to sleep. And to-morrow morning we'll
have some honey for breakfast. Do Tiggers like honey?"
"They like everything," said Tigger cheerfully.
"Then if they like going to sleep on the floor, I'll go
back to bed," said Pooh, "and we'll do things in the morning.
Good night." And he got back into bed and went fast asleep.
When he awoke in the morning, the first thing he saw
was Tigger, sitting in front of the glass and looking at
himself.
"Hallo!" said Pooh.
"Hallo!" said Tigger. "I've found somebody just like
me. I thought I was the only one of them."
Pooh got out of bed, and began to explain what a
looking-glass was, but just as he was getting to the
interesting part, Tigger said:
"Excuse me a moment, but there's something climbing up
your table," and with one loud Worraworraworraworraworra he
jumped at the
end of the tablecloth, pulled it to the ground, wrapped
himself up in it three times, rolled to the other end of the
room, and, after a terrible struggle, got his head into the
daylight again, and said cheerfully. "Have I won?"
"That's my tablecloth," said Pooh, as he began to
unwind Tigger.
"I wondered what it was," said Tigger.
"It goes on the table and you put things on it."
"Then why did it try to bite me when I wasn't looking?"
"I don't think it did," said Pooh.
"It tried," said Tigger, "but I was too quick for it."
Pooh put the cloth back on the table, and he put a
large honey-pot on the cloth, and they sat down to breakfast.
And as soon as they sat down, Tigger took a large mouthful of
honey . . . and he looked up at the ceiling with his head on
one side, and made exploring noises with his tongue, and
considering noises, and what-have-we-got-here noises . . . and
then he said in a very decided voice:
"Tiggers don't like honey."
"Oh!" said Pooh, and tried to make it sound Sad and
Regretful. "I thought they liked everything."
"Everything except honey," said Tigger.
Pooh felt rather pleased about this, and said that, as
soon as he had finished his own breakfast, he would take Tigger
round to Piglet's house, and Tigger could try some of Piglet's
haycorns.
"Thank you, Pooh," said Tigger, " because haycorns is
really what Tiggers like best."
So after breakfast they went round to see Piglet, and
Pooh explained as they went that Piglet was a Very Small Animal
who didn't like bouncing, and asked Tigger not to be too Bouncy
just at first. And Tigger, who had been hiding behind trees and
jumping out on Pooh's shadow when it wasn't looking, said that
Tiggers were only bouncy before breakfast, and that as soon as
they had had a few haycorns they became Quiet and Refined. So
by-and-by they knocked at the door of Piglet's house.
"Hallo, Pooh," said Piglet.
"Hallo, Piglet. This is Tigger."
"Oh, is it?" said Piglet, and he edged round to the
other side of the table. "I thought Tiggers were smaller than
that."
"Not the big ones," said Tigger.
"They like haycorns," said Pooh, "so that's what we've
come for, because poor Tigger hasn't had any breakfast yet."
Piglet pushed the bowl of haycorns towards Tigger, and
said, "Help yourself," and then he got close up to Pooh and
felt much braver, and said, "So you're Tigger? Well, well!" in
a careless sort of voice. But Tigger said nothing because his
mouth was full of haycorns....
After a long munching noise he said:
"Ee-ers o i a-ors."
And when Pooh and Piglet said "What?" he said "Skoos
ee," and went outside for a moment.
When he came back he said firmly:
"Tiggers don't like haycorns."
"But you said they liked everything except honey," said
Pooh.
"Everything except honey and haycorns," explained
Tigger.
When he heard this, Pooh said, "Oh, I see!" and Piglet,
who was rather glad that Tiggers didn't like haycorns, said,
"What about thistles?"
"Thistles," said Tigger, "is what Tiggers like best."
"Then lets go along and see Eeyore," said Piglet
So the three of them went; and after they had walked
and walked and walked, they came to the part of the Forest
where Eeyore was.
"Hallo, Eeyore!" said Pooh. "This is Tigger."
"What is?" said Eeyore.
"This," explained Pooh and Piglet together, and Tigger
smiled his happiest smile and said nothing.
Eeyore walked all round Tigger one way, and then turned
and walked all round him the other way.
"What did you say it was?" he asked.
"Tigger."
"Ah!" said Eeyore.
"He's just come," explained Piglet.
"Ah!" said Eeyore again.
He thought for a long time and then said:
"When is he going?"
Pooh explained to Eeyore that Tigger was a great friend
of Christopher Robin's, who had come to stay in the Forest, and
Piglet explained to Tigger that he mustn't mind what Eeyore
said because he was always gloomy; and Eeyore explained to
Piglet that, on the contrary, he was feeling particularly
cheerful this morning; and Tigger explained to anybody who was
listening that he hadn't had any breakfast yet. I knew there
was something," said Pooh. "Tiggers always eat thistles, so
that was why we came to see you, Eeyore."
"Don't mention it, Pooh."
"Oh, Eeyore, I didn't mean that I didn't want to see
you--"
"Quite--quite. But your new stripy friend-- naturally,
he wants his breakfast. What did you say his name was?"
"Tigger."
"Then come this way, Tigger."
Eeyore led the way to the most thistly-looking patch of
thistles that ever was, and waved a hoof at it.
"A little patch I was keeping for my birthday," he
said; " but, after all, what are birthdays? Here to-day and
gone to-morrow. Help yourself, Tigger."
Tigger thanked him and looked a little anxiously at
Pooh.
"Are these really thistles?" he whispered.
"Yes," said Pooh.
"What Tiggers like best?"
"That's right," said Pooh.
"I see," said Tigger.
So he took a large mouthful, and he gave a large
crunch.
"Ow!" said Tigger.
He sat down and put his paw in his mouth.
"What's the matter?" asked Pooh.
"Hot!" mumbled Tigger.
"Your friend," said Eeyore, "appears to have bitten on
a bee."
Pooh's friend stopped shaking his head to get the
prickles out, and explained that Tiggers didn't like thistles.
"Then why bend a perfectly good one?" asked Eeyore.
"But you said," began Pooh, "--you said that Tiggers
liked everything except honey and haycorns."
"And thistles," said Tigger, who was now running round
in circles with his tongue hanging out.
Pooh looked at him sadly.
"What are we going to do?" he asked Piglet.
Piglet knew the answer to that, and he said at once
that they must go and see Christopher Robin
"You'll find him with Kanga," said Eeyore. He came
close to Pooh, and said in a loud whisper:
"Could you ask your friend to do his exercises
somewhere else? I shall be having lunch directly, and don't
want it bounced on just before I begin. A trifling matter, and
fussy of me, but we all have our little ways."
Pooh nodded solemnly and called to Tigger.
"Come along and we'll go and see Kanga. She's sure to
have lots of breakfast for you."
Tigger finished his last circle and came up to Pooh and
Piglet.
"Hot!" he explained with a large and friendly smile.
"Come on!" and he rushed off.
Pooh and Piglet walked slowly after him. And as they
walked Piglet said nothing, because he couldn't think of
anything, and Pooh said nothing, because he was thinking of a
poem. And when he had thought of it he began:
What shall we do about poor little Tigger?
If he never eats nothing he'll never get bigger.
He doesn't like honey and haycorns and thistles
Because of the taste and because of the bristles.
And all the good things which an animal likes
Have the wrong sort of swallow or too many spikes.
"He's quite big enough anyhow," said Piglet.
"He isn't really very big."
"Well he seems so."
Pooh was thoughtful when he heard this, and then he
murmured to himself:
But whatever his weight in pounds, shillings,
and ounces,
He always seems bigger because of his bounces.
"And that's the whole poem," he said. "Do you like it,
Piglet?"
"All except the shillings," said Piglet. "I don't think
they ought to be there."
"They wanted to come in after the pounds," explained
Pooh, " so I let them. It is the best way to write poetry,
letting things come."
"Oh, I didn't know," said Piglet.
Tigger had been bouncing in front of them all this
time, turning round every now and then to ask, "Is this the
way?"--and now at last they came in sight of Kanga's house, and
there was Christopher Robin. Tigger rushed up to him.
"Oh, there you are, Tigger!" said Christopher Robin. "I
knew you'd be somewhere."
"I've been finding things in the Forest," said Tigger
importantly. "I've found a pooh and a piglet and an eeyore, but
I can't find any breakfast."
Pooh and Piglet came up and hugged Christopher Robin,
and explained what had been happening.
"Don't you know what Tiggers like?" asked Pooh.
"I expect if I thought very hard I should," said
Christopher Robin, "but I thought Tigger knew."
"I do," said Tigger. "Everything there is in the world
except honey and haycorns and--what were those hot things
called?"
"Thistles."
Yes, and those."
"Oh, well then, Kanga can give you some breakfast."
So they went into Kanga's house, and when Roo had said,
"Hallo, Pooh," and "Hallo, Piglet" once, and "Hallo, Tigger"
twice, because he had never said it before and it sounded
funny, they told Kanga what they wanted, and Kanga said very
kindly, "Well, look in my cupboard, Tigger dear, and see what
you'd like." Because she knew at once that, however big Tigger
seemed to be, he wanted as much kindness as Roo.
"Shall I look, too?" said Pooh, who was beginning to
feel a little eleven o'clockish. And he found a small tin of
condensed milk, and something seemed to tell him that Tiggers
didn't like this, so he took it into a corner by itself, and
went with it to see that nobody interrupted it.
But the more Tigger put his nose into this and his paw
into that, the more things he found which Tiggers didn't like.
And when he had found everything in the cupboard, and couldn't
eat any of it, he said to Kanga, "What happens now?"
But Kanga and Christopher Robin and Piglet were all
standing round Roo, watching him have his Extract of Malt. And
Roo was saying, "Must I?" and Kanga was saying "Now, Roo dear,
you remember what you promised."
"What is it?" whispered Tigger to Piglet.
"His Strengthening Medicine," said Piglet. "He hates
it."
So Tigger came closer, and he leant over the back of
Roo's chair, and suddenly he put out his tongue, and took one
large golollop, and, with a sudden jump of surprise, Kanga
said, "Oh!" and then clutched at the spoon again just as it was
disappearing, and pulled it safely back out of Tigger's mouth.
But the Extract of Malt had gone.
"Tigger dear!" said Kanga.
"He's taken my medicine, he's taken my medicine, he's
taken my medicine!" sang Roo happily, thinking it was a
tremendous joke.
Then Tigger looked up at the ceiling, and closed his
eyes, and his tongue went round and round his chops, in case he
had left any outside, and a peaceful smile came over his face
as he said, "So that's what Tiggers like!"
Which explains why he always lived at Kanga's house
afterwards, and had Extract of Malt for breakfast, dinner, and
tea. And sometimes, when Kanga thought he wanted strengthening,
he had a spoonful or two of Roosbreakfast after meals as
medicine.
"But I think," said Piglet to Pooh, "that he's been
strengthened quite enough."
Chapter III. In which a search is organdized,
and Piglet meets the Heffalump again
POOH was sitting in his house one day, counting his pots
of honey, when there came a knock on the door.
"Fourteen," said Pooh. "Come in. Fourteen. Or was it
fifteen? Bother. That's muddled me."
"Hallo, Pooh," said Rabbit.
"Hallo, Rabbit. Fourteen, wasn't it?"
"What was?"
"My pots of honey what I was counting."
"Fourteen, that's right."
"Are you sure?"
"No," said Rabbit. "Does it matter?"
"I just like to know," said Pooh humbly, "So as I can
say to myself: 'I've got fourteen pots of honey left.' Or
fifteen, as the case may be. It's sort of comforting."
"Well, let's call it sixteen," said Rabbit. "What I
came to say was: Have you seen Small anywhere about?"
"I don't think so," said Pooh. And then, after thinking
a little more, he said? Who is Small?"
"One of my friends-and-relations," said Rabbit
carelessly.
This didn't help Pooh much, because Rabbit had so many
friends-and-relations, and of such different sorts and sizes,
that he didn't know whether he ought to be looking for Small at
the top of an oaktree or in the petal of a buttercup.
"I haven't seen anybody to-day," said Pooh, "not so as
to say 'Hallo, Small!' to. Did you want him for anything?"
"I don't want him," said Rabbit. "But it's always
useful to know where a friend-and-relation is, whether you want
him or whether you
don't."
"Oh, I see," said Pooh. "Is he lost?"
"Well," said Rabbit, "nobody has seen him for a long
time, so I suppose he is. Anyhow," he went on importantly, "I
promised Christopher
Robin I'd Organize a Search for him, so come on."
Pooh said good-bye affectionately to his fourteen pots
of honey, and hoped they were fifteen; and he and Rabbit went
out into the Forest.
"Now," said Rabbit, "this is a Search, and I've
Organized it----"
"Done what to it?" said Pooh.
"Organized it. Which means--well, it's what you do to a
Search, when you don't all look in the same place at once. So I
want you, Pooh, to search by the Six Pine Trees first, and then
work your way towards Owl's House, and look out for me there.
Do you see?"
"No," said Pooh. "What "
"Then I'll see you at Owl's House in about an hour's
time."
"Is Piglet organdized too?"
"We all are," said Rabbit, and off he went.
As soon as Rabbit was out of sight, Pooh remembered
that he had forgotten to ask who Small was, and whether he was
the sort of friend-and-relation who settled on one's nose, or
the sort who got trodden on by mistake, and as it was Too Late
Now, he thought he would begin the Hunt by looking for Piglet,
and asking him what they were looking for before he looked for
it.
"And it's no good looking at the Six Pine Trees for
Piglet," said Pooh to himself, "because he's been organdized in
a special place of his own. So I shall have to look for the
Special Place first. I wonder where it is." And he wrote it
down in his head like this:
ORDER OF LOOKING FOR THINGS.
I. Special Place. (To find Piglet.)
2. Piglet. (To find who Small is.)
3. Small. (To find Small.)
4. Rabbit. (To tell him I've found Small.)
5. Small Again. (To tell him I've found Rabbit.)
"Which makes it look like a bothering sort of day,"
thought Pooh, as he stumped along.
The next moment the day became very bothering indeed,
because Pooh was so busy not looking where he was going that he
stepped on a piece
of the Forest which had been left out by mistake; and he
only just had time to think to himself: "I'm flying. What Owl
does. I wonder how you stop--" when he stopped.
Bump!
"Ow!" squeaked something.
"That's funny," thought Pooh. "I said 'Ow! without
really oo'ing."
"Help!" said a small, high voice.
"That's me again," thought Pooh. "I've had an Accident,
and fallen down a well, and my voice has gone all squeaky and
works before I'm ready for it, because I've done something to
myself inside. Bother!"
"Help--help!"
"There you are! I say things when I'm not trying. So it
must be a very bad Accident." And then he thought that perhaps
when he did try to say things he wouldn't be able to; so, to
make sure, he said loudly:
"A Very Bad Accident to Pooh Bear."
"Pooh!" squeaked the voice.
"It's Piglet!" cried Pooh eagerly. "Where are you?"
"Underneath," said Piglet in an underneath sort of way.
"Underneath what?"
"You," squeaked Piglet. "Get up!"
"Oh!" said Pooh, and scrambled up as quickly as he
could. "Did I fall on you, Piglet?"
"You fell on me," said Piglet, feeling himself all
over.
"I didn't mean to," said Pooh sorrowfully.
"I didn't mean to be underneath," said Piglet sadly.
"But I'm all right now, Pooh, and I am so glad it was you."
"What's happened?" said Pooh. "Where are we?"
"I think we're in a sort of Pit. I was walking along,
looking for somebody, and then suddenly I wasn't any more, and
just when I got up to see where I was, something fell on me.
And it was you."
"So it was," said Pooh. "Yes," said Piglet. "Pooh," he
went on nervously, and came a little closer, "do you think
we're in a Trap?"
Pooh hadn't thought about it at all, but now he nodded.
For suddenly he remembered how he and Piglet had once made a
Pooh Trap for Heffalumps, and he guessed what had happened. He
and Piglet had fallen into a Heffalump Trap for Poohs! That was
what it was.
"What happens when the Heffalump comes?" asked Piglet
tremblingly, when he had heard the news.
"Perhaps he won't notice you, Piglet," said Pooh
encouragingly, "because you're a Very Small Animal."
"But he'll notice you, Pooh."
"He'll notice me, and I shall notice him," said Pooh,
thinking it out. "We'll notice each other for a long time, and
then he'll say: 'Ho-ho!'"
Piglet shivered a little at the thought of that
"Ho-ho!" and his ears began to twitch.
"W-what will you say?" he asked.
Pooh tried to think of something he would say, but the
more he thought, the more he felt that there is no real answer
to "Ho-ho!" said by a Heffalump in the sort of voice this
Heffalump was going to say it in.
"I shan't say anything," said Pooh at last. "I shall
just hum to myself, as if I was waiting for something."
"Then perhaps he'll say 'Ho-ho!' again?" suggested
Piglet anxiously.
"He will," said Pooh.
Piglet's ears twitched so quickly that he had to lean
them against the side of the Trap to keep them quiet.
"He will say it again," said Pooh, "and I shall go on
humming. And that will Upset him. Because when you say 'Ho-ho!'
twice, in a gloating sort of way, and the other person only
hums, you suddenly find, just as you begin to say it the third
time that --that--well, you find----"
"What?"
"That it isn't," said Pooh.
"Isn't what?"
Pooh knew what he meant, but, being a Bear of Very
Little Brain, couldn't think of the words.
"Well, it just isn't," he said again.
"You mean it isn't ho-ho-ish any more?" said Piglet
hopefully.
Pooh looked at him admiringly and said that that was
what he meant--if you went on humming all the time, because you
couldn't go on saying "Ho-ho!" for ever.
"But he'll say something else," said Piglet.
"That's just it. He'll say? What's all this?" And then
I shall say--and this is a very good idea, Piglet, which I've
just thought of--I shall say: `It's a trap for a Heffalump
which I've made, and I'm waiting for the Heffalump to fall in.'
And I shall go on humming. That will Unsettle him."
"Pooh!" cried Piglet, and now it was his turn to be the
admiring one. "You've saved us!"
"Have I?" said Pooh, not feeling quite sure.
But Piglet was quite sure; and his mind ran on, and he
saw Pooh and the Heffalump talking to each other, and he
thought suddenly, and a little sadly, that it would have been
rather nice if it had been Piglet and the Heffalump talking so
grandly to each other, and not Pooh, much as he loved Pooh;
because he really had more brain than Pooh, and the
conversation would go better if he and not Pooh were doing one
side of it, and it would be comforting afterwards in the
evenings to look back on the day when he answered a Heffalump
back as bravely as if the Heffalump wasn't there. It seemed so
easy now. He knew just what he would say:
HEFFALUMP (gloatingly): "Ho-ho!"
PIGLET (carelessly): "Tra-la-la, tra-la-la."
HEFFALUMP (surprised, and not quite so sure of
himself): "Ho-ho!"
PIGLET (more carelessly still): "Tiddle-um-tum,
tiddle-um-tum."
HEFFALUMP (beginning to say Ho-ho and turning it
awkwardly into a cough): "H'r'm! What's all this?"
PIGLET (surprised): "Hullo! This is a trap I've made,
and I'm waiting for a Heffalump to fall into it."
HEFFALUMP (greatly disappointed): "Oh!" (After a long
silence): "Are you sure?"
PIGLET: "Yes."
HEFFALUMP: "Oh!" (nervously): "I--I thought it was a
trap I'd made to catch Piglets."
PIGLET (surprised): "Oh, no!"
HEFFALUMP: "Oh!" (Apologetically): "I--I must have got
it wrong then."
PIGLET: "I'm afraid so." (Politely): "I'm sorry." (He
goes on humming.)
HEFFALUMP: "Well-well-I-well. I suppose I'd better be
getting back?"
PIGLET (looking up carelessly): "Must you? Well, if you
see Christopher Robin anywhere, you might tell him I want him."
HEFFALUMP (eager to please): "Certainly! Certainly!"
(He hurries off.)
POOH (who wasn't going to be there, but we find we
can't do without him."): "Oh, Piglet, how brave and clever you
are!"
PIGLET (modestly): "Not at all, Pooh." (And then, when
Christopher Robin comes, Pooh can tell him about it.)
While Piglet was dreaming this happy dream, and Pooh
was wondering again whether it was fourteen or fifteen, the
Search for Small was still going on all over the Forest.
Small's real name was Very Small Beetle, but he was called
Small for short, when he was spoken to at all, which hardly
ever happened except when somebody said: "Really, Small!" He
had been staying with Christopher Robin for a few seconds, and
he had started round a gorse-bush for exercise, but instead of
coming back the other way, as expected, he hadn't, so nobody
knew where he was.
"I expect he's just gone home," said Christopher Robin
to Rabbit.
"Did he say Good-bye-and-thank-you-for-a-nice-time?"
said Rabbit.
"He'd only just said how-do-you-do," said Christopher
Robin.
"Ha!" said Rabbit. After thinking a little, he went on:
"Has he written a letter saying how much he enjoyed himself,
and how sorry he was he had to go so suddenly?"
Christopher Robin didn't think he had.
"Ha!" said Rabbit again, and looked very important.
"This is Serious. He is Lost. We must begin the Search at
once."
Christopher Robin, who was thinking of something else,
said: "Where's Pooh?"--but Rabbit had gone. So he went into his
house and drew a picture of Pooh going a long walk at about
seven o'clock in the morning, and then he climbed to the top of
his tree and climbed down again, and then he wondered what Pooh
was doing, and went across the Forest to see.
It was not long before he came to the Gravel Pit, and
he looked down, and there were Pooh and Piglet, with their
backs to him, dreaming happily.
"Ho-ho!" said Christopher Robin loudly and suddenly.
Piglet jumped six inches in the air with Surprise and
Anxiety, but Pooh went on dreaming.
"It's the Heffalump!" thought Piglet nervously. "Now,
then!" He hummed in his throat a little, so that none of the
words should stick, and then, in one most delightfully easy
way, he said: "Tra-la-la, tra-la-la," as if he had just thought
of it. But he didn't look round, because if you look round and
see a Very Fierce Heffalump looking down at you, sometimes you
forget what you were going to say.
"Rum-tum-tum-tiddle-um," said Christopher Robin in a
voice like Pooh's. Because Pooh had once invented a song which
went:
Tra-la-la, tra-la-la,
Tra-la-la, tra-la-la,
Rum-tum-tum-tiddle-um.
So whenever Christopher Robin sings it, he always sings
it in a Pooh-voice, which seems to suit it better.
"He's said the wrong thing," thought Piglet anxiously.
"He ought to have said, 'Ho-ho!' again. Perhaps I had better
say it for him." And, as fiercely as he could, Piglet said:
"Ho-ho!"
"How did you get there, Piglet?" said Christopher Robin
in his ordinary voice.
"This is Terrible," thought Piglet. "First he talks in
Pooh's voice, and then he talks in Christopher Robin's voice,
and he's doing it so as to Unsettle me. "And being now
Completely Unsettled, he said very quickly and squeakily: "This
is a trap for Poohs, and I'm waiting to fall in it, ho-ho,
what's all this, and then I say ho-ho again."
"What?" said Christopher Robin.
"A trap for ho-ho's," said Piglet huskily. "I've just
made it, and I'm waiting for the ho-ho to come-come."
How long Piglet would have gone on like this I don't
know, but at that moment Pooh woke up suddenly and decided that
it was sixteen. So he got up; and as he turned his head so as
to soothe himself in that awkward place in the middle of the
back where something was tickling him, he saw Christopher
Robin.
"Hallo!" he shouted joyfully.
"Hallo, Pooh."
Piglet looked up, and looked away again. And he felt so
Foolish and Uncomfortable that he had almost decided to run
away to Sea and be a Sailor, when suddenly he saw something.
"Pooh!" he cried. "There's something climbing up your
back."
"I thought there was," said Pooh.
"It's Small!" cried Piglet.
"Oh, that's who it is, is it?" said Pooh.
"Christopher Robin, I've found Small!" cried Piglet.
"Well done, Piglet," said Christopher Robin.
And at these encouraging words Piglet felt quite happy
again, and decided not to be a Sailor after all. So when
Christopher Robin had helped them out of the Gravel Pit, they
all went off together hand-in-hand.
And two days later Rabbit happened to meet Eeyore in
the Forest.
"Hallo, Eeyore," he said, "what are you looking for?"
"Small, of course," said Eeyore. "Haven't you any
brain?"
"Oh, but didn't I tell you?" said Rabbit. "Small was
found two days ago."
There was a moment's silence.
"Ha-ha," said Eeyore bitterly. "Merriment and what-not.
Don't apologize. It's just what would happen."
Chapter IV. In which it is shown that Tiggers
don't climb trees
One day when Pooh was thinking, he thought he would go and
see Eeyore, because he hadn't seen him since yesterday. And as
he walked through the heather, singing to himself, he suddenly
remembered that he hadn't seen Owl since the day before yesterday,
so he thought that he would just look in at the Hundred Acre Wood
on the way and see if Owl was at home.
Well, he went on singing, until he came to the part of
the stream where the stepping-stones were, and when he was in
the middle of the third stone he began to wonder how Kanga and
Roo and Tigger were getting on, because they all lived together
in a different part of the Forest. And he thought, "I haven't
seen Roo for a long time, and if I don't see him to-day it will
be a still longer time." So he sat down on the stone in the
middle of the stream, and sang another verse of his song, while
he wondered what to do.
The other verse of the song was like this:
I could spend a happy morning
Seeing Roo,
I could spend a happy morning
Being Pooh.
For it doesn't seem to matter,
If I don't get any fatter
(And I don't get any fatter),
What I do.
The sun was so delightfully warm, and the stone, which
had been sitting in it for a long time, was so warm, too that
Pooh had almost decided to go on being Pooh in the middle of
the stream for the rest of the morning, when he remembered
Rabbit.
"Rabbit," said Pooh to himself. "I like talking to
Rabbit. He talks about sensible things. He doesn't use long,
difficult words, like Owl. He uses short, easy words, like
'What about lunch?' and 'Help yourself, Pooh.' I suppose,
really, I ought to go and see Rabbit."
Which made him think of another verse:
Oh, I like his way of talking,
Yes, I do.
It's the nicest way of talking
Just for two.
And a Help-yourself with Rabbit
Though it may become a habit,
Is a pleasant sort of habit
For a Pooh.
So when he had sung this, he got up off his stone,
walked back across the stream, and set off for Rabbit's house.
But he hadn't got far before he began to say to
himself:
"Yes, but suppose Rabbit is out?"
"Or suppose I get stuck in his front door again, coming
out, as I did once when his front door wasn't big enough?"
"Because I know I'm not getting fatter, but his front
door may be getting thinner."
"So wouldn't it be better if----"
And all the time he was saying things like this he was
going more and more westerly, without thinking . . . until
suddenly he found himself at his own front door again.
And it was eleven o'clock.
Which was Time-for-a-little-something....
Half an hour later he was doing what he had always
really meant to do, he was stumping off to Piglet's house. And
as he walked, he wiped his mouth with the back of his paw, and
sang rather a fluffy song through the fur. It went like this:
I could spend a happy morning
Seeing Piglet.
And I couldn't spend a happy morning
not seeing Piglet.
And it doesn't seem to matter
If I don't see Owl and Eeyore (or any of the
others),
And I'm not going to see Owl or Eeyore (or any of
the others)
Or Christopher Robin.
Written down like this, it doesn't seem a very good
song, but coming through pale fawn fluff at about half-past
eleven on a very sunny morning, it seemed to Pooh to be one of
the best songs he had ever sung. So he went on singing it.
Piglet was busy digging a small hole in the ground
outside his house.
"Hallo, Piglet," said Pooh.
"Hallo, Pooh,--" said Piglet, giving a jump of
surprise. "I knew it was you."
"So did I," said Pooh. "What are you doing?"
"I'm planting a haycorn, Pooh, so that it can grow up
into an oak-tree, and have lots of haycorns just outside the
front door instead of having to walk miles and miles, do you
see, Pooh?"
"Supposing it doesn't?" said Pooh.
"It will, because Christopher Robin says it will, so
that's why I'm planting it."
"Well," said Pooh, "if I plant a honeycomb outside my
house, then it will grow up into a beehive."
Piglet wasn't quite sure about this.
"Or a piece of a honeycomb," said Pooh, "so as not to
waste too much. Only then I might only get a piece of a
beehive, and it might be the wrong piece, where the bees were
buzzing and not hunnying. Bother."
Piglet agreed that that would be rather bothering.
"Besides, Pooh, it's a very difficult thing, planting
unless you know how to do it," he said; and he put the acorn in
the hole he had made, and covered it up with earth, and jumped
on it.
"I do know," said Pooh, "because Christopher Robin gave
me a mastershalum seed, and I planted it, and I'm going to have
mastershalums all over the front door."
"I thought they were called nasturtiums," said Piglet
timidly, as he went on jumping.
"No," said Pooh. "Not these. These are called
mastershalums."
When Piglet had finished jumping, he wiped his paws on
his front, and said, "What shall we do now?" and Pooh said,
"Let's go and see Kanga and Roo and Tigger," and Piglet said,
"Y-yes. L-let's"--because he was still a little anxious about
Tigger, who was a Very Bouncy Animal, with a way of saying
How-do-you-do, which always left your ears full of sand, even
after Kanga had said, "Gently, Tigger dear," and had helped you
up again. So they set off for Kanga's house.
Now it happened that Kanga had felt rather motherly
that morning, and Wanting to Count Things--like Roo's vests,
and how many pieces of soap there were left, and the two clean
spots in Tigger's feeder; so she had sent them out with a
packet of watercress sandwiches for Roo and a packet of
extract-of-malt sandwiches for Tigger, to have a nice long
morning in the Forest not getting into mischief. And off they
had gone.
And as they went, Tigger told Roo (who wanted to know)
all about the things that Tiggers could do.
"Can they fly?" asked Roo.
"Yes," said Tigger, "they're very good flyers, Tiggers
are. Strornry good flyers."
"Oo!" said Roo. "Can they fly as well as Owl?"
"Yes," said Tigger. "Only they don't want to."
"Why don't they want to?" well, they just don't like it
somehow."
Roo couldn't understand this, because he thought it
would be lovely to be able to fly, but Tigger said it was
difficult to explain to anybody who wasn't a Tigger himself.
"Well," said Roo, "can they jump as far as Kangas?"
"Yes," said Tigger. "When they want to."
"I love jumping," said Roo. "Let's see who can jump
farthest, you or me."
"I can," said Tigger. "But we mustn't stop now, or we
shall be late."
"Late for what?"
"For whatever we want to be in time for," said Tigger,
hurrying on.
In a little while they came to the Six Pine Trees.
"I can swim," said Roo. "I fell into the river, and I
swimmed. Can Tiggers swim?"
"Of course they can. Tiggers can do everything."
"Can they climb trees better than Pooh?" asked Roo,
stopping under the tallest Pine Tree, and looking up at it.
"Climbing trees is what they do best," said Tigger.
"Much better than Poohs."
"Could they climb this one?"
"They're always climbing trees like that," said Tigger.
"Up and down all day."
"Oo, Tigger, are they really?"
"I'll show you," said Tigger bravely, "and you can sit
on my back and watch me. "For of all the things which he had
said Tiggers could do, the only one he felt really certain
about suddenly was climbing trees.
"Oo, Tigger--oo, Tigger--oo, Tigger!" squeaked Roo
excitedly.
So he sat on Tigger's back and up they went.
And for the first ten feet Tigger said happily to
himself, "Up we go!"
And for the next ten feet he said:
"I always said Tiggers could climb trees."
And for the next ten feet he said:
"Not that it's easy, mind you."
And for the next ten feet he said:
"Of course, there's the coming-down too. Backwards."
And then he said:
"Which will be difficult . . ."
"Unless one fell . . ."
"When it would be . . ."
"EASY."
And at the word "easy," the branch he was standing on
broke suddenly, and he just managed to clutch at the one above
him as he felt himself going . . . and then slowly he got his
chin over it . . . and then one back paw . . . and then the
other . . . until at last he was sitting on it, breathing very
quickly, and wishing that he had gone in for swimming instead.
Roo climbed off, and sat down next to him.
"Oo, Tigger," he said excitedly, "are we at the top?
"No," said Tigger.
"Are we going to the top?"
"No," said Tigger.
"Oh!" said Roo rather sadly. And then he went on
hopefully: "That was a lovely bit just now, when you pretended
we were going to fall-bump-to-the-bottom, and we didn't. Will
you do that bit again?"
"No," said Tigger.
Roo was silent for a little while, and then he said,
"Shall we eat our sandwiches, Tigger?" And Tigger said, "Yes,
where are they?" And Roo said, "At the bottom of the tree." And
Tigger said, "I don't think we'd better eat them just yet." So
they didn't.
By-and-by Pooh and Piglet came along. Pooh was telling
Piglet in a singing voice that it didn't seem to matter, if he
didn't get any fatter, and he didn't think he was getting any
fatter, what he did; and Piglet was wondering how long it would
be before his haycorn came up.
"Look, Pooh!" said Piglet suddenly. "There's something
in one of the Pine Trees."
"So there is!" said Pooh, looking up wonderingly.
"There's an Animal."
Piglet took Pooh's arm, in case Pooh was frightened.
"Is it One of the Fiercer Animals?" he said, looking
the other way.
Pooh nodded.
"It's a Jagular," he said.
"What do Jagulars do?" asked Piglet, hoping that they
wouldn't.
"They hide in the branches of trees, and drop on you as
you go underneath," said Pooh. "Christopher Robin told me."
"Perhaps we better hadn't go underneath, Pooh. In case
he dropped and hurt himself."
"They don't hurt themselves," said Pooh. "They're such
very good droppers."
Piglet still felt that to be underneath a Very Good
Dropper would be a Mistake, and he was just going to hurry back
for something which he had forgotten when the Jagular called
out to them.
"Help! Help!" it called.
"That's what Jagulars always do," said Pooh, much
interested. "They call 'Help! Help!' and then when you look up,
they drop on you."
"I'm looking down," cried Piglet loudly, so as the
Jagular shouldn't do the wrong thing by accident. Something
very excited next to the Jagular heard him, and squeaked:
"Pooh and Piglet! Pooh and Piglet!"
All of a sudden Piglet felt that it was a much nicer
day than he had thought it was. All warm and sunny----
"Pooh!" he cried. "I believe it's Tigger and Roo!"
"So it is," said Pooh. "I thought it was a Jagular and
another Jagular."
"Hallo, Roo!" called Piglet. "What are you doing?"
"We can't get down, we can't get down!" cried Roo.
"Isn't it fun? Pooh, isn't it fun, Tigger and I are living in a
tree, like Owl, and we're going to stay here for ever and ever.
I can see Piglet's house. Piglet, I can see your house from
here. Aren't we high? Is Owl's house as high up as this?"
"How did you get there, Roo?" asked Piglet.
"On Tigger's back! And Tiggers can't climb downwards,
because their tails get in the way, only upwards, and Tigger
forgot about that when we started, and he's only just
remembered. So we've got to stay here for ever and ever--unless
we go higher. What did you say, Tigger? Oh, Tigger says if we
go higher we shan't be able to see Piglet's house so well, so
we're going to stop here."
"Piglet," said Pooh solemnly, when he had heard all
this, "what shall we do?" And he began to eat Tigger's
sandwiches.
"Are they stuck?" asked Piglet anxiously.
Pooh nodded.
"Couldn't you climb up to them?"
"I might, Piglet, and I might bring Roo down on my
back, but I couldn't bring Tigger down. So we must think of
something else. "And in a thoughtful way he began to eat Roo's
sandwiches, too.
Whether he would have thought of anything before he had
finished the last sandwich, I don't know, but he had just got
to the last but one when there was a crackling in the bracken,
and Christopher Robin and Eeyore came strolling along together.
"I shouldn't be surprised if it hailed a good deal
to-morrow," Eeyore was saying. "Blizzards and what-not. Being
fine to-day doesn't Mean Anything. It has no sig--what's that
word? Well, it has none of that. It's just a small piece of
weather."
"There's Pooh!" said Christopher Robin, who didn't much
mind what it did to-morrow, as long as he was out in it.
"Hallo, Pooh!"
"It's Christopher Robin!" said Piglet. "He'll know what
to do."
They hurried up to him.
"Oh, Christopher Robin," began Pooh.
"And Eeyore," said Eeyore.
"Tigger and Roo are right up the Six Pine Trees, and
they can't get down, and----"
"And I was just saying," put in Piglet, "that if only
Christopher Robin----"
"And Eeyore----"
"If only you were here, then we could think of
something to do."
Christopher Robin looked up at Tigger and Roo, and
tried to think of something.
"I thought," said Piglet earnestly, "that if Eeyore
stood at the bottom of the tree, and if Pooh stood on Eeyore's
back, and if I stood on Pooh's shoulders----"
"And if Eeyore's back snapped suddenly, then we could
all laugh. Ha ha! Amusing in a quiet way," said Eeyore, "but
not really helpful."
"Well," said Piglet meekly, "I thought----"
"Would it break your back, Eeyore?" asked Pooh, very
much surprised.
"That's what would be so interesting, Pooh. Not being
quite sure till afterwards."
Pooh said "Oh!" and they all began to think again.
"I've got an idea!" cried Christopher Robin suddenly.
"Listen to this, Piglet," said Eeyore, "and then you'll
know what we're trying to do."
"I'll take off my tunic and we'll each hold a corner,
and then Roo and Tigger can jump into it, and it will be all
soft and bouncy for them, and they won't hurt themselves."
"Getting Tigger down," said Eeyore, "and not hurting
anybody. Keep those two ideas in your head, Piglet, and you'll
be all right."
But Piglet wasn't listening, he was so agog at the
thought of seeing Christopher Robin's blue braces again. He had
only seen them once before, when he was much younger, and,
being a little over-excited by them, had had to go to bed half
an hour earlier than usual; and he had always wondered since if
they were really as blue and as bracing as he had thought them.
So when Christopher Robin took his tunic off, and they were, he
felt quite friendly to Eeyore again, and held the corner of the
tunic next to him and smiled happily at him. And Eeyore
whispered back: "I'm not saying there won't be an Accident now,
mind you. They're funny things, Accidents. You never have them
till you're having them."
When Roo understood what he had to do, he was wildly
excited, and cried out: "Tigger, Tigger, we're going to jump!
Look at me jumping, Tigger! Like flying, my jumping will be.
Can Tiggers do it?" And he squeaked out: "I'm coming,
Christopher Robin!" and he jumped-- straight into the middle of
the tunic. And he was going so fast that he bounced up again
almost as high as where he was before--and went on bouncing and
saying, "Oo!" for quite a long time--and then at last he
stopped and said, "Oo, lovely!" And they put him on the ground.
"Come on, Tigger," he called out. "It's easy."
But Tigger was holding on to the branch and saying to
himself: "It's all very well for Jumping Animals like Kangas,
but it's quite different for Swimming Animals like Tiggers.
"And he thought of himself floating on his back down a river,
or striking out from one island to another, and he felt that
that was really the life for a Tigger.
"Come along," called Christopher Robin. "You'll be all
right."
"Just wait a moment," said Tigger nervously. "Small
piece of bark in my eye." And he moved slowly along his branch.
"Come on, it's easy!" squeaked Roo. And suddenly Tigger
found how easy it was.
"Ow!" he shouted as the tree flew past him.
"Look out!" cried Christopher Robin to the others.
There was a crash, and a tearing noise, and a confused
heap of everybody on the ground.
Christopher Robin and Pooh and Piglet picked themselves
up first, and then they picked Tigger up, and underneath
everybody else was Eeyore.
"Oh, Eeyore!" cried Christopher Robin. "Are you hurt?"
And he felt him rather anxiously, and dusted him and helped him
to stand up again.
Eeyore said nothing for a long time. And then he said:
"Is Tigger there?"
Tigger was there, feeling Bouncy again already.
"Yes," said Christopher Robin. "Tigger's here."
"Well, just thank him for me," said Eeyore.
Chapter V. In which Rabbit has a busy day,
and we learn what Christopher Robin does in the mornings
IT was going to be one of Rabbit's busy days. As soon as he
woke up he felt important, as if everything depended upon him.
It was just the day for Organizing Something, or for Writing a
Notice Signed Rabbit, or for Seeing What Everybody Else Thought
About It. It was a perfect morning for hurrying round to Pooh,
and saying, "Very well, then, I'll tell Piglet," and then going
to Piglet, and saying, "Pooh thinks--but perhaps I'd better see
Owl first." It was a Captainish sort of day, when everybody
said, "Yes, Rabbit " and "No, Rabbit," and waited until he had
told them.
He came out of his house and sniffed the warm spring
morning as he wondered what he would do. Kanga's house was
nearest, and at Kanga's
house was Roo, who said "Yes, Rabbit " and "No, Rabbit"
almost better than anybody else in the Forest; but there was
another animal there nowadays, the strange and Bouncy Tigger;
and he was the sort of Tigger who was always in front when you
were showing him the way anywhere,
and was generally out of sight when at last you came to the
place and said proudly "Here we are!"
"No, not Kanga's," said Rabbit thoughtfully to himself,
as he curled his whiskers in the sun, and to make quite sure
that he wasn't going there, he turned to the left and trotted
off in the other direction, which was the way to Christopher
Robin's house.
"After all," said Rabbit to himself, "Christopher Robin
depends on Me. He's fond of Pooh and Piglet and Eeyore, and so
am I, but they haven't any Brain. Not to notice. And he
respects Owl, because you can't help respecting anybody who can
spell TUESDAY, even if he doesn't spell it right; but spelling
isn't everything. There are days when spelling Tuesday simply
doesn't count. And Kanga is too busy looking after Roo, and Roo
is too young and Tigger is too bouncy to be any help, so
there's really nobody but Me, when you come to look at it. I'll
go and see if there's anything he wants doing, and then I'll do
it for him. It's just the day for doing things."
He trotted along happily, and by-and-by he crossed the
stream and came to the place where his friends-and-relations
lived. There seemed to be even more of them about than usual
this morning, and having nodded to a hedgehog or two, with whom
he was too busy to shake hands, and having said, "Good morning,
good morning," importantly to some of the others, and "Ah,
there you are," kindly, to the smaller ones, he waved a paw at
them over his shoulder, and was gone leaving such an air of
excitement and I-don't-know-what behind him, that several
members of the Beetle family, including Henry Rush, made their
way at once to the Hundred Acre Wood and began climbing trees,
in the hope of getting to the top before it happened, whatever
it was, so that they might see it properly. Rabbit hurried on
by the edge of the Hundred Acre Wood, feeling more important
every minute, and soon he came to the tree where Christopher
Robin lived. He knocked at the door, and he called out once or
twice, and then he walked back a little way and put his paw up
to keep the sun out, and called to the top of the tree, and
then he turned all round and shouted "Hallo!" and "I say!"
"It's Rabbit!"--but nothing happened. Then he stopped and
listened, and everything stopped and listened with him, and the
Forest was very lone and still and peaceful in the sunshine,
until suddenly a hundred miles above him a lark began to sing.
"Bother!" said Rabbit. "He's gone out." He went back to
the green front door, just to make sure, and he was turning
away, feeling that his morning had got all spoilt, when he saw
a piece of paper on the ground. And there was a pin in it, as
if it had fallen off the door.
"Ha!" said Rabbit, feeling quite happy again. "Another
notice!"
This is what it said:
GON OUT
BACKSON
BISY
BACKSON
C. R.
"Ha!" said Rabbit again. "I must tell the others." And
he hurried off importantly.
The nearest house was Owl's, and to Owl's House in the
Hundred Acre wood he made his way. He came to Owl's door, and
he knocked and he rang, and he rang and he knocked, and at last
Owl's head came out and said "Go away, I'm thinking--oh, it's
you?" which was how he always began.
"Owl," said Rabbit shortly, "you and I have brains. The
others have fluff. If there is any thinking to be done in this
Forest--and when I say thinking I mean thinking--you and I must
do it."
"Yes," said Owl. "I was."
"Read that."
Owl took Christopher Robin's notice from Rabbit and
looked at it nervously. He could spell his own name WOL, and he
could spell Tuesday so that you knew it wasn't Wednesday, and
he could read quite comfortably when you weren't looking over
his shoulder and saying "Well?" all the time, and he could----
"Well?" said Rabbit.
"Yes," said Owl, looking Wise and Thoughtful.
"I see what you mean. Undoubtedly."
"Well?"
"Exactly," said Owl. "Precisely." And he added, after a
little thought, "If you had not come to me, I should have come
to you."
"Why?" asked Rabbit.
"For that very reason," said Owl, hoping that something
helpful would happen soon.
"Yesterday morning," said Rabbit solemnly, "I went to
see Christopher Robin. He was out. Pinned on his door was a
notice!"
"The same notice?"
"A different one. But the meaning was the same. It's
very odd."
"Amazing," said Owl, looking at the notice again, and
getting, just for a moment, a curious sort of feeling that
something had happened to Christopher Robin's back. "What did
you do?"
"Nothing."
"The best thing," said Owl wisely.
"Well?" said Rabbit again, as Owl knew he was going to.
"Exactly," said Owl.
For a little while he couldn't think of anything more;
and then, all of a sudden, he had an idea.
"Tell me, Rabbit," he said, "the exact words of the
first notice. This is very important. Everything depends on
this. The exact words of the first notice."
"It was just the same as that one really."
Owl looked at him, and wondered whether to push him off
the tree; but, feeling that he could always do it afterwards,
he tried once more to find out what they were talking about.
"The exact words, please" he said, as if Rabbit hadn't
spoken.
"It just said, 'Gone out. Backson.' Same as this, only
this says 'Bisy Backson' too."
Owl gave a great sigh of relief.
"Ah!" said Owl. "Now we know where we are."
"Yes, but where's Christopher Robin?" said Rabbit.
"That's the point."
Owl looked at the notice again. To one of his education
the reading of it was easy. "Gone out, Backson. Bisy,
Backson"-- just the sort of thing you'd expect to see on a
notice.
"It is quite clear what has happened, my dear Rabbit,"
he said. "Christopher Robin has gone out somewhere with
Backson. He and Backson are busy together. Have you seen a
Backson anywhere about in the Forest lately?"
"I don't know," said Rabbit. "That's what I came to ask
you. What are they like?"
"Well," said Owl, "the Spotted or Herbaceous Backson is
just a--"
"At least," he said, "it's really more of a----"
"Of course," he said, "it depends on the----"
"Well," said Owl, "the fact is," he said, "I don't know
what they're like," said Owl frankly.
"Thank you," said Rabbit. And he hurried off to see
Pooh.
Before he had gone very far he heard a noise. So he
stopped and listened. This was the noise.
NOISE, BY POOH
Oh, the butterflies are flying,
Now the winter days are dying,
And the primroses are trying
To be seen.
And the turtle-doves are cooing,
And the woods arc up and doing,
For the violets are blue-ing
In the green.
Oh, the honey-bees are gumming
On their little wings, and humming
That the summer, which is coming,
Will be fun.
And the cows are almost cooing,
And the turtle-doves are mooing,
Which is why a Pooh is poohing
In the sun.
For the spring is really springing;
You can see a skylark singing,
And the blue-bells, which are ringing,
Can be heard.
And the cuckoo isn't cooing,
But he's cucking and he's ooing,
And a Pooh is simply poohing
Like a bird.
"Hallo, Pooh," said Rabbit.
"Hallo, Rabbit," said Pooh dreamily.
"Did you make that song up?"
"Well, I sort of made it up," said Pooh. "It isn't
Brain," he went on humbly, "because You Know Why, Rabbit; but
it comes to me sometimes."
"Ah!" said Rabbit, who never let things come to him,
but always went and fetched them. "Well, the point is, have you
seen a Spotted or
Herbaceous Backson in the Forest, at all?"
"No," said Pooh. "Not a--no," said Pooh. "I saw Tigger
just now."
"That's no good."
"No," said Pooh. I thought it wasn't."
"Have you seen Piglet?"
"Yes," said Pooh. "I suppose that isn't any good
either?" he asked meekly.
"Well, it depends if he saw anything."
"He saw me," said Pooh.
Rabbit sat down on the ground next to Pooh and, feeling
much less important like that, stood up again.
"What it all comes to is this," he said. "What does
Christopher Robin do in the morning nowadays?"
"What sort of thing?"
"Well, can you tell me anything you've seen him do in
the morning? These last few days."
"Yes," said Pooh. "We had breakfast together yesterday.
By the Pine Trees. I'd made up a little basket, just a little,
fair-sized basket, an ordinary biggish sort of basket, full
of--"
"Yes, yes," said Rabbit, "but I mean later than that.
Have you seen him between eleven and twelve?"
"Well," said Pooh, "at eleven o'clock--at eleven
o'clock--well, at eleven o'clock, you see, I generally get home
about then. Because I have One or Two Things to Do."
"Quarter past eleven, then?"
"Well--" said Pooh.
"Half past?"
"Yes," said Pooh. "At half past--or perhaps later--I
might see him."
And now that he did think of it, he began to remember
that he hadn't seen Christopher Robin about so much lately. Not
in the mornings. Afternoons, yes; evenings, yes; before
breakfast, yes; just after breakfast, yes. And then, perhaps,
"See you again, Pooh," and off he'd go.
"That's just it," said Rabbit. "Where?"
"Perhaps he's looking for something."
"What?" asked Rabbit.
"That's just what I was going to say," said Pooh. And
then he added, "Perhaps he's looking for a-- for a--"
"A Spotted or Herbaceous Backson?"
"Yes," said Pooh. "One of those. In case it isn't."
Rabbit looked at him severely.
"I don't think you're helping," he said.
"No," said Pooh. "I do try," he added humbly.
Rabbit thanked him for trying, and said that he would
now go and see Eeyore, and Pooh could walk with him if he
liked. But Pooh, who felt another verse of his song coming on
him, said he would wait for Piglet, good-bye, Rabbit; so Rabbit
went off.
But, as it happened, it was Rabbit who saw Piglet
first. Piglet had got up early that morning to pick himself a
bunch of violets; and when he had picked them and put them in a
pot in the middle of his house, it suddenly came over him that
nobody had ever picked Eeyore a bunch of violets, and the more
he thought of this, the more he thought how sad it was to be an
Animal who had never had a bunch of violets picked for him. So
he hurried out again, saying to himself, "Eeyore, Violets" and
then "Violets, Eeyore," in case he forgot, because it was that
sort of day, and he picked a large bunch and trotted along,
smelling them, and feeling very happy, until he came to the
place where Eeyore was.
"Oh, Eeyore," began Piglet a little nervously, because
Eeyore was busy.
Eeyore put out a paw and waved him away.
"To-morrow," said Eeyore. "Or the next day." Piglet
came a little closer to see what it was. Eeyore had three
sticks on the ground, and was looking at them. Two of the
sticks were touching at one end, but not at the other, and the
third stick was laid across them. Piglet thought that perhaps
it was a Trap of some kind.
"Oh, Eeyore," he began again, "I just--"
"Is that little Piglet?" said Eeyore, still looking
hard at his sticks.
"Yes, Eeyore, and I--"
"Do you know what this is?"
"No," said Piglet.
"It's an A."
"Oh," said Piglet.
"Not O--A," said Eeyore severely. "Can't you hear, or
do you think you have more education than Christopher Robin?"
"Yes," said Piglet. "No," said Piglet very quickly. And
he came closer still.
"Christopher Robin said it was an A, and an A it
is--until somebody treads on it," Eeyore added sternly.
Piglet jumped backwards hurriedly, and smelt at his
violets.
"Do you know what A means, little Piglet?"
"No, Eeyore, I don't."
"It means Learning, it means Education, it means all
the things that you and Pooh haven't got. That's what A means."
"Oh," said Piglet again. "I mean, does it?" he
explained quickly.
"I'm telling you. People come and go in this Forest,
and they say, 'It's only Eeyore, so it doesn't count.' They
walk to and fro saying 'Ha ha!' But do they know anything about
A? They don't. It's just three sticks to them. But to the
Educated--mark this, little Piglet--to the Educated, not
meaning Poohs and Piglets, it's a great and glorious A. Not,"
he added, "just something that anybody can come and breathe
on."
Piglet stepped back nervously, and looked round for
help.
"Here's Rabbit," he said gladly. "Hallo, Rabbit."
Rabbit came up importantly, nodded to Piglet, and said,
"Ah, Eeyore," in the voice of one who would be saying "Good-bye
" in about two more minutes.
"There's just one thing I wanted to ask you, Eeyore.
What happens to Christopher Robin in the mornings nowadays?"
"What's this that I'm looking at?" said Eeyore, still
looking at it.
"Three sticks," said Rabbit promptly.
"You see?" said Eeyore to Piglet. He turned to Rabbit.
"I will now answer your question," he said solemnly.
"Thank you," said Rabbit.
"What does Christopher Robin do in the mornings? He
learns. He becomes Educated. He instigorates--I think that is
the word he mentioned, but I may be referring to something
else--he instigorates Knowledge. In my small way I also, if I
have the word right, am--am doing what he does. That, for
instance, is?"
"An A," said Rabbit, "but not a very good one. Well, I
must get back and tell the others."
Eeyore looked at his sticks and then he looked at
Piglet.
"What did Rabbit say it was?" he asked.
"An A," said Piglet.
"Did you tell him?"
"No, Eeyore, I didn't. I expect he just knew."
"He knew? You mean this A thing is a thing Rabbit
knew?"
"Yes, Eeyore. He's clever, Rabbit is."
"Clever!" said Eeyore scornfully, putting a foot
heavily on his three sticks. "Education!" said Eeyore bitterly,
jumping on his six sticks. "What is Learning?" asked Eeyore as
he kicked his twelve sticks into the air. "A thing Rabbit
knows! Ha!"
"I think--" began Piglet nervously.
"Don't," said Eeyore.
"I think Violets are rather nice," said Piglet. And he
laid his bunch in front of Eeyore and scampered off.
Next morning the notice on Christopher Robins door
said:
GONE OUT
BACK SOON
C. R.
Which is why all the animals in the Forest-- except, of
course, the Spotted and Herbaceous Backson--now know what
Christopher Robin does in the mornings.
Chapter VI. In which Pooh invents a new game
and eeyore joins in
BY the time it came to the edge of the Forest the stream
had grown up, so that it was almost a river, and, being
grown-up, it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used
to do when it was younger, but moved more slowly. For it knew
now where it was going, and it said to itself, "There is no
hurry. We shall get there some day." But all the little streams
higher up in the Forest went this way and that, quickly,
eagerly, having so much to find out before it was too late.
There was a broad track, almost as broad as a road,
leading from the Outland to the Forest, but before it could
come to the Forest, it had to cross this river. So, where it
crossed, there was a wooden bridge, almost as broad as a road,
with wooden rails on each side of it. Christopher Robin could
just get his chin on to the top rail, if he wanted to, but it
was more fun to stand on the bottom rail, so that he could lean
right over, and watch the river slipping slowly away beneath
him. Pooh could get his chin on to the bottom rail he if wanted
to, but it was more fun to lie down and get his head under it,
and watch the river slipping slowly away beneath him. And this
was the only way in which Piglet and Roo could watch the river
at all, because they were too small to reach the bottom rail.
So they would lie down and watch it . . . and it slipped away
very slowly, being in no hurry to get there.
One day, when Pooh was walking towards this bridge, he
was trying to make up a piece of poetry about fir-cones,
because there they were, lying about on each side of him, and
he felt singy. So he picked a fir-cone up, and looked at it,
and said to himself, "This is a very good fir-cone, and
something ought to rhyme to it." But he couldn't think of
anything. And then this came into his head suddenly:
Here is a myst'ry
About a little fir-tree.
Owl says it's his tree,
And Kanga says it's her tree.
"Which doesn't make sense," said Pooh, "because Kanga
doesn't live in a tree."
He had just come to the bridge; and not looking where
he was going, he tripped over something, and the fir-cone
jerked out of his paw into the river.
"Bother," said Pooh, as it floated slowly under the
bridge, and he went back to get another fir-cone which had a
rhyme to it. But then he thought that he would just look at the
river instead, because it was a peaceful sort of day, so he lay
down and looked at it, and it slipped slowly away beneath him .
. . and suddenly, there was his fir-cone slipping away too.
"That's funny," said Pooh. "I dropped it on the other
side," said Pooh, "and it came out on this side! I wonder if it
would do it again?" And he went back for some more fir-cones.
It did. It kept on doing it. Then he dropped two in at
once, and leant over the bridge to see which of them would come
out first; and one of them did; but as they were both the same
size, he didn't know if it was the one which he wanted to win,
or the other one. So the next time he dropped one big one and
one little one, and the big one came out first, which was what
he had said it would do, and the little one came out last,
which was what he had said it would do, so he had won twice . .
. and when he went home for tea, he had won thirty-six and lost
twenty-eight, which meant that he was-- that he had--well, you
take twenty-eight from thirty-six, and that's what he was.
Instead of the other way round.
And that was the beginning of the game called
Poohsticks, which Pooh invented, and which he and his friends
used to play on the edge of the Forest. But they played with
sticks instead of fir-cones, because they were easier to mark.
Now one day Pooh and Piglet and Rabbit and Roo were all
playing Poohsticks together. They had dropped their sticks in
when Rabbit said "Go!" and then they had hurried across to the
other side of the bridge, and now they were all leaning over
the edge, waiting to see whose stick would come out first. But
it was a long time coming, because the river was very lazy that
day, and hardly seemed to mind if it didn't ever get there at
all.
"I can see mine!" cried Roo. "No, I can't, it's
something else. Can you see yours, Piglet? I thought I could
see mine, but I couldn't. There it is! No, it isn't. Can you
see yours, Pooh?"
"No," said Pooh.
"I expect my stick's stuck," said Roo. "Rabbit, my
stick's stuck. Is your stick stuck, Piglet?"
"They always take longer than you think," said Rabbit.
"How long do you think they'll take?" asked Roo.
"I can see yours, Piglet," said Pooh suddenly.
"Mine's a sort of greyish one," said Piglet, not daring
to lean too far over in case he fell in.
"Yes, that's what I can see. It's coming over on to my
side."
Rabbit leant over further than ever, looking for his,
and Roo wriggled up and down, calling out "Come on, stick!
Stick, stick, stick!" and Piglet got very excited because his
was the only one which had been seen, and that meant that he
was winning. "It's coming!" said Pooh.
"Are you sure it's mine?" squeaked Piglet excitedly.
"Yes, because it's grey. A big grey one. Here it comes!
A very--big--grey---- Oh, no, it isn't, it's Eeyore."
And out floated Eeyore.
"Eeyore!" cried everybody.
Looking very calm, very dignified, with his legs in the
air, came Eeyore from beneath the bridge.
"It's Eeyore!" cried Roo, terribly excited.
"Is that so?" said Eeyore, getting caught up by a
little eddy, and turning slowly round three times. "I
wondered."
"I didn't know you were playing," said Roo.
"I'm not," said Eeyore.
"Eeyore, what are you doing there?" said Rabbit.
"I'll give you three guesses, Rabbit. Digging holes in
the ground? Wrong. Leaping from branch to branch of a young
oak-tree? Wrong. Waiting for somebody to help me out of the
river? Right. Give Rabbit time, and he'll always get the
answer."
"But, Eeyore," said Pooh in distress, "what can we--I
mean, how shall we--do you think if we--"
"Yes," said Eeyore. "One of those would be just the
thing. Thank you, Pooh."
"He's going round and round," said Roo, much impressed.
"And why not?" said Eeyore coldly.
"I can swim too," said Roo proudly.
"Not round and round," said Eeyore. "It's much more
difficult. I didn't want to come swimming at all to-day," he
went on, revolving slowly. "But if, when in, I decide to
practise a slight circular movement from right to left--or
perhaps I should say," he added, as he got into another eddy,
"from left to right, just as it happens to occur to me, it is
nobody's business but my own."
There was a moment's silence while everybody thought.
"I've got a sort of idea," said Pooh at last, "but I
don't suppose it's a very good one."
"I don't suppose it is either," said Eeyore.
"Go on, Pooh," said Rabbit. "Let's have it."
"Well, if we threw stones and things into the river on
one side of Eeyore, the stones would make waves, and the waves
would wash him to the other side."
"That's a very good idea," said Rabbit, and Pooh looked
happy again.
"Very," said Eeyore.
"When I want to be washed, Pooh, I'll let you know."
"Supposing we hit him by mistake?" said Piglet
anxiously.
"Or supposing you missed him by mistake," said Eeyore.
"Think of all the possibilities, Piglet, before you settle down
to enjoy yourselves."
But Pooh had got the biggest stone he could carry, and
was leaning over the bridge, holding it in his paws.
"I'm not throwing it, I'm dropping it, Eeyore," he
explained. "And then I can't miss--I mean I can't hit you.
Could you stop turning round for a moment, because it muddles
me rather?"
"No," said Eeyore. "I like turning round."
Rabbit began to feel that it was time he took command.
"Now, Pooh," he said, "when I say 'Now!' you can drop
it. Eeyore, when I say 'Now!' Pooh will drop his stone."
"Thank you very much, Rabbit, but I expect I shall
know."
"Are you ready, Pooh? Piglet, give Pooh a little more
room. Get back a bit there, Roo. Are you ready?"
"No," said Eeyore.
"Now!" said Rabbit.
Pooh dropped his stone. There was a loud splash, and
Eeyore disappeared....
It was an anxious moment for the watchers on the
bridge. They looked and looked . . . and even the sight of
Piglet's stick coming out a little in front of Rabbit's didn't
cheer them up as much as you would have expected. And then,
just as Pooh was beginning to think that he must have chosen
the wrong stone or the wrong river or the wrong day for his
Idea, something grey showed for a moment by the river bank . .
. and it got slowly bigger and bigger . . . and at last it was
Eeyore coming, out.
With a shout they rushed off the bridge, and pushed and
pulled at him; and soon he was standing among them again on dry
land.
"Oh, Eeyore, you are wet!" said Piglet, feeling him.
Eeyore shook himself, and asked somebody to explain to
Piglet what happened when you had been inside a river for quite
a long time.
"Well done, Pooh," said Rabbit kindly. "That was a good
idea of ours."
"What was?" asked Eeyore.
"Hooshing you to the bank like that."
"Hooshing me?" said Eeyore in surprise. "Hooshing me?
You didn't think I was hooshed, did you? I dived. Pooh dropped
a large stone on me, and so as not to be struck heavily on the
chest, I dived and swam to the bank."
"You didn't really," whispered Piglet to Pooh, so as to
comfort him.
"I didn't think I did," said Pooh anxiously.
"It's just Eeyore," said Piglet. "I thought your Idea
was a very good Idea."
Pooh began to feel a little more comfortable, because
when you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of
Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very
Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into
the open and has other people looking at it. And, anyhow,
Eeyore was in the river, and now he wasn't, so he hadn't done
any harm.
"How did you fall in, Eeyore?" asked Rabbit, as he
dried him with Piglet's handkerchief.
"I didn't," said Eeyore.
"But how--"
"I was BOUNCED," said Eeyore.
"Oo," said Roo excitedly, "did somebody push you?"
"Somebody BOUNCED me. I was just thinking by the side
of the river--thinking, if any of you know what that
means--when I received a loud BOUNCE."
"Oh, Eeyore!" said everybody.
"Are you sure you didn't slip?" asked Rabbit wisely.
"Of course I slipped. If you're standing on the
slippery bank of a river, and somebody BOUNCES you loudly from
behind, you slip. What did you think I did?"
"But who did it?" asked Roo.
Eeyore didn't answer.
"I expect it was Tigger," said Piglet nervously.
"But, Eeyore," said Pooh, "was it a Joke, or an
Accident? I mean--"
"I didn't stop to ask, Pooh. Even at the very bottom of
the river I didn't stop to say to myself, 'Is this a Hearty
Joke, or is it the Merest Accident?' I just floated to the
surface, and said to myself, 'It's wet.' If you know what I
mean."
"And where was Tigger?" asked Rabbit.
Before Eeyore could answer, there was a loud noise
behind them, and through the hedge came Tigger himself.
"Hallo, everybody," said Tigger cheerfully.
"Hallo, Tigger," said Roo.
Rabbit became very important suddenly.
"Tigger," he said solemnly, "what happened just now?"
"Just when?" said Tigger a little uncomfortably.
"When you bounced Eeyore into the river."
"I didn't bounce him."
"You bounced me," said Eeyore gruffly.
"I didn't really. I had a cough, and I happened to be
behind Eeyore, and I said 'Grrrr--oppp--ptschschschz.'"
"Why?" said Rabbit, helping Piglet up, and dusting him.
"It's all right, Piglet."
"It took me by surprise," said Piglet nervously.
"That's what I call bouncing," said Eeyore. "Taking
people by surprise. Very unpleasant habit. I don't mind Tigger
being in the Forest," he went on, "because it's a large Forest,
and there's plenty of room to bounce in it. But I don't see why
he should come into my little corner of it, and bounce there.
It isn't as if there was anything very wonderful about my
little corner. Of course for people who like cold, wet, ugly
bits it is something rather special, but otherwise it's just a
corner, and if anybody feels bouncy "
"I didn't bounce, I coughed," said Tigger crossly.
"Bouncy or coffy, it's all the same at the bottom of
the river."
"Well," said Rabbit, "all I can say Is--well, here's
Christopher Robin, so he can say it."
Christopher Robin came down from the Forest to the
bridge, feeling all sunny and careless, and just as if twice
nineteen didn't matter a bit, as it didn't on such a happy
afternoon, and he thought that if he stood on the bottom rail
of the bridge, and leant over, and watched the river slipping
slowly away beneath him, then he would suddenly know everything
that there was to be known, and he would be able to tell Pooh,
who wasn't quite sure about some of it. Rut when he got to the
bridge and saw all the animals there, then he knew that it
wasn't that kind of afternoon, but the other kind, when you
wanted to do something.
"It's like this, Christopher Robin," began Rabbit.
"Tigger--"
"No, I didn't," said Tigger.
"Well, anyhow, there I was," said Eeyore.
"But I don't think he meant to," said Pooh.
"He just is bouncy," said Piglet, "and he can't help
it."
"Try bouncing me, Tigger," said Roo eagerly. "Eeyore,
Tigger's going to try me. Piglet, do you think--"
"Yes, yes," said Rabbit, "we don't all want to speak at
once. The point is, what does Christopher Robin think about
it?"
"All I did was I coughed," said Tigger.
"He bounced," said Eeyore.
"Well, I sort of boffed," said Tigger.
"Hush!" said Rabbit, holding up his paw what does
Christopher Robin think about it all? That's the point."
"Well," said Christopher Robin, not quite sure what it
was all about, "I think--"
"Yes?" said everybody.
"I think we all ought to play Poohsticks.!"
So they did. And Eeyore, who had never played it
before, won more times than anybody else; and Roo fell in
twice, the first time by accident and the second time on
purpose, because he suddenly saw Kanga coming from the Forest,
and he knew he'd have to go to bed anyhow. So then Rabbit said
he'd go with them; and Tigger and Eeyore went off together,
because Eeyore wanted to tell Tigger How to Win at Poohsticks,
which you do by letting your stick drop in a twitchy sort of
way, if you understand what I mean, Tigger; and Christopher
Robin and Pooh and Piglet were left on the bridge by
themselves.
For a long time they looked at the river beneath them,
saying nothing, and the river said nothing too, for it felt
very quiet and peaceful on this summer afternoon.
"Tigger is all right really," said Piglet lazily.
"Of course he is," said Christopher Robin.
"Everybody is really," said Pooh. "That's what I
think," said Pooh. "But I don't suppose I'm right," he said.
"Of course you are," said Christopher Robin.
Chapter VII. In which Tigger is unbounced
ONE day Rabbit and Piglet were sitting outside Pooh's front
door listening to Rabbit, and Pooh was sitting with them. It
was a drowsy summer afternoon, and the Forest was full of
gentle sounds, which all seemed to be saying to Pooh, "Don't
listen to Rabbit, listen to me." So he got into a comfortable
position for not listening to Rabbit, and from time to time he
opened his eyes to say "Ah!" and then closed them again to say
"True," and from time to time Rabbit said, "You see what I
mean, Piglet " very earnestly, and Piglet nodded earnestly to
show that he did.
"In fact," said Rabbit, coming to the end of it at
last, "Tigger's getting so Bouncy nowadays that it's time we
taught him a lesson. Don't you think so, Piglet?"
Piglet said that Tigger was very Bouncy, and that if
they could think of a way of unbouncing him, it would be a Very
Good Idea. "Just what I feel," said Rabbit. "What do you say,
Pooh?"
Pooh opened his eyes with a jerk and said, "Extremely."
"Extremely what?" asked Rabbit.
"What you were saying," said Pooh. "Undoubtably."
Piglet gave Pooh a stiffening sort of nudge, and Pooh,
who felt more and more that he was somewhere else, got up
slowly and began to look for himself.
"But how shall we do it?" asked Piglet. "What sort of a
lesson, Rabbit?"
"That's the point," said Rabbit.
The word "lesson" came back to Pooh as one he had heard
before somewhere.
"There's a thing called Twy-stymes," he said.
"Christopher Robin tried to teach it to me once, but it
didn't."
"What didn't?" said Rabbit.
"Didn't what?" said Piglet
Pooh shook his head.
"I don't know," he said. "It just didn't. What are we
talking about?"
"Pooh," said Piglet reproachfully, "haven't you been
listening to what Rabbit was saying?"
"I listened, but I had a small piece of fluff in my
ear. Could you say it again, please, Rabbit?"
Rabbit never minded saying things again, so he asked
where he should begin from; and when Pooh had said from the
moment when the fluff got in his ear, and Rabbit had asked when
that was, and Pooh had said he didn't know because he hadn't
heard properly, Piglet settled it all by saying that what they
were trying to do was, they were just trying to think of a way
to get the bounces out of Tigger, because however much you
liked him, you couldn't deny it, he did bounce.
"Oh, I see," said Pooh.
"There's too much of him," said Rabbit, "that's what it
comes to."
Pooh tried to think, and all he could think of was
something which didn't help at all. So he hummed it very
quietly to himself.
If Rabbit
Was bigger
And fatter
And stronger,
Or bigger
Than Tigger,
If Tigger was smaller,
Then Tigger's bad habit
Of bouncing at Rabbit
Would matter
No longer,
If Rabbit
Was taller.
"What was Pooh saying?" asked Rabbit. "Any good?"
"No," said Pooh sadly. "No good."
"Well, I've got an idea," said Rabbit, "and here it is.
We take Tigger for a long explore, somewhere where he's never
been, and we lose him there, and next morning we find him
again, and--mark my words--he'll be a different Tigger
altogether."
"Why?" said Pooh.
"Because he'll be a Humble Tigger. Because he'll be a
Sad Tigger, a Melancholy Tigger, a Small and Sorry Tigger, an
Oh-Rabbit-I-am-glad-to-see-you Tigger. That's why."
"Will he be glad to see me and Piglet, too?"
"Of course."
"That's good," said Pooh.
"I should hate him to go on being Sad," said Piglet
doubtfully.
"Tiggers never go on being Sad," explained Rabbit.
"They get over it with Astonishing Rapidity. I asked Owl, just
to make sure, and he said that that's what they always get over
it with. But if we can make Tigger feel Small and Sad just for
five minutes, we shall have done a good deed."
"Would Christopher Robin think so?" asked Piglet.
"Yes," said Rabbit. "He'd say 'You've done a good deed,
Piglet. I would have done it myself, only I happened to be
doing something else. Thank you, Piglet.' And Pooh, of course."
Piglet felt very glad about this, and he saw at once
that what they were going to do to Tigger was a good thing to
do, and as Pooh and Rabbit were doing it with him, it was a
thing which even a Very Small Animal could wake up in the
morning and be comfortable about doing. So the only question
was, where should they lose Tigger?
"We'll take him to the North Pole," said Rabbit,
"because it was a very long explore finding it, so it will be a
very long explore for Tigger un-finding it again."
It was now Pooh's turn to feel very glad, because it
was he who had first found the North Pole, and when they got
there, Tigger would see a notice which said, "Discovered by
Pooh, Pooh found it," and then Tigger would know, which perhaps
he didn't now, the sort of Bear Pooh was. That sort of Bear.
So it was arranged that they should start next morning,
and that Rabbit, who lived near Kanga and Roo and Tigger,
should now go home and ask Tigger what he was doing to-morrow,
because if he wasn't doing anything, what about coming for an
explore and getting Pooh and Piglet to come too? And if Tigger
said "Yes" that would be all right, and if he said "No "
"He won't," said Rabbit. "Leave it to me." And he went
off busily.
The next day was quite a different day. Instead of
being hot and sunny, it was cold and misty. Pooh didn't mind
for himself, but when he thought of all the honey the bees
wouldn't be making, a cold and misty day always made him feel
sorry for them. He said so to Piglet when Piglet came to fetch
him, and Piglet said that he wasn't thinking of that so much,
but of how cold and miserable it would be being lost all day
and night on the top of the Forest. But when he and Pooh had
got to Rabbit's house, Rabbit said it was just the day for
them, because Tigger always bounced on ahead of everybody, and
as soon as he got out of sight, they would hurry away in the
other direction, and he would never see them again.
"Not never?" said Piglet.
"Well, not until we find him again, Piglet. To-morrow,
or whenever it is. Come on. He's waiting for us."
When they got to Kanga's house, they found that Roo was
waiting too, being a great friend of Tigger's, which made it
Awkward; but Rabbit whispered "Leave this to me" behind his paw
to Pooh, and went up to Kanga.
"I don't think Roo had better come," he said. "Not
to-day."
"Why not?" said Roo, who wasn't supposed to be
listening.
"Nasty cold day," said Rabbit, shaking his head. "And
you were coughing this morning."
"How do you know?" asked Roo indignantly.
"Oh, Roo, you never told me," said Kanga reproachfully.
"It was a biscuit cough," said Roo, "not one you tell
about."
"I think not to-day, dear. Another day."
"To-morrow?" said Roo hopefully.
"We'll see," said Kanga.
"You're always seeing, and nothing ever happens," said
Roo sadly.
"Nobody could see on a day like this, Roo," said
Rabbit. "I don't expect we shall get very far, and then this
afternoon we'll all--we'll all-- we'll--ah, Tigger, there you
are. Come on. Goodbye, Roo! This afternoon we'll--come on,
Pooh! All ready? That's right. Come on."
So they went. At first Pooh and Rabbit and Piglet
walked together, and Tigger ran round them in circles, and
then, when the path got narrower, Rabbit, Piglet and Pooh
walked one after another, and Tigger ran round them in oblongs,
and by-and-by, when the gorse got very prickly on each side of
the path, Tigger ran up and down in front of them, and
sometimes he bounced into Rabbit and sometimes he didn't. And
as they got higher, the mist got thicker, so that Tigger kept
disappearing, and then when you thought he wasn't there, there
he was again, saying "I say, come on," and before you could say
anything, there he wasn't.
Rabbit turned round and nudged Piglet. "The next time,"
he said. "Tell Pooh."
"The next time," said Piglet to Pooh.
"The next what?" said Pooh to Piglet.
Tigger appeared suddenly, bounced into Rabbit, and
disappeared again. "Now!" said Rabbit. He jumped into a hollow
by the side of the path, and Pooh and Piglet jumped after him.
They crouched in the bracken, listening. The Forest was very
silent when you stopped and listened to it. They could see
nothing and hear nothing.
"H'sh!" said Rabbit.
"I am," said Pooh.
There was a pattering noise . . . then silence again.
"Hallo!" said Tigger, and he sounded so close suddenly
that Piglet would have jumped if Pooh hadn't accidentally been
sitting on most of him.
"Where are you?" called Tigger.
Rabbit nudged Pooh, and Pooh looked about for Piglet to
nudge, but couldn't find him, and Piglet went on breathing wet
bracken as quietly as he could, and felt very brave and
excited.
"That's funny," said Tigger.
There was a moment's silence, and then they heard him
pattering off again. For a little longer they waited, until the
Forest had become so still that it almost frightened them, and
then Rabbit got up and stretched himself.
"Well?" he whispered proudly. "There we are I Just as I
said."
"I've been thinking," said Pooh, "and I think "
"No," said Rabbit. "Don't. Run. Come on." And they all
hurried off, Rabbit leading the way.
"Now," said Rabbit, after they had gone a little way,
"we can talk. What were you going to say, Pooh?"
"Nothing much. Why are we going along here?"
"Because it's the way home."
"Oh!" said Pooh.
"I think it's more to the right," said Piglet
nervously. "What do you think, Pooh?"
Pooh looked at his two paws. He knew that one of them
was the right, and he knew that when you had decided which one
of them was the right, then the other one was the left, but he
never could remember how to begin.
"Well," he said slowly.
"Come on," said Rabbit. "I know it's this way."
They went on. Ten minutes later they stopped again.
"It's very silly," said Rabbit, "but just for the
moment I-- Ah, of course. Come on.". . .
"Here we are," said Rabbit ten minutes later. "No,
we're not.". . .
"Now," said Rabbit ten minutes later, "I think we ought
to be getting--or are we a little bit more to the right than I
thought?". . .
"It's a funny thing," said Rabbit ten minutes later,
"how everything, looks the same in a mist. Have you noticed it,
Pooh?"
Pooh said that he had.
"Lucky we know the Forest so well, or we might get
lost," said Rabbit half an hour later, and he gave the careless
laugh which you give when you know the Forest so well that you
can't get lost.
Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind.
"Pooh!" he whispered.
"Yes, Piglet?"
"Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. "I just
wanted to be sure of you."
When Tigger had finished waiting for the others to
catch him up, and they hadn't, and when he had got tired of
having nobody to say, "I say, come on" to, he thought he would
go home. So he trotted back; and the first thing Kanga said
when she saw him was, "There's a good Tigger. You're just in
time for your Strengthening Medicine," and she poured it out
for him. Roo said proudly, "I've had mine," and Tigger
swallowed his and said, "So have I," and then he and Roo pushed
each other about in a friendly way, and Tigger accidentally
knocked over one or two chairs by accident, and Roo
accidentally knocked over one on purpose, and Kanga said, "Now
then, run along."
"Where shall we run along to?" asked Roo.
"You can go and collect some fircones for me," said
Kanga, giving them a basket.
So they went to the Six Pine Trees, and threw fircones
at each other until they had forgotten what they came for, and
they left the basket under the trees and went back to dinner.
And it was just as they were finishing dinner that Christopher
Robin put his head in at the door.
"Where's Pooh?" he asked.
"Tigger dear, where's Pooh?" said Kanga. Tigger
explained what had happened at the same time that Roo was
explaining about his Biscuit Cough and Kanga was telling them
not both to talk at once, so it was some time before
Christopher Robin guessed that Pooh and Piglet and Rabbit were
all lost in the mist on the top of the Forest.
"It's a funny thing about Tiggers," whispered Tigger to
Roo, "how Tiggers never get lost."
"Why don't they, Tigger?"
"They just don't," explained Tigger. "That's how it
is."
"Well," said Christopher Robin, "we shall have to go
and find them, that's all. Come on, Tigger."
"I shall have to go and find them," explained Tigger to
Roo.
"May I find them too?" asked Roo eagerly.
"I think not to-day, dear," said Kanga. "Another day."
"Well, if they're lost to-morrow, may I find them?"
"We'll see," said Kanga, and Roo, who knew what that
meant, went into a corner and practised jumping out at himself,
partly because he wanted to practise this, and partly because
he didn't want Christopher Robin and Tigger to think that he
minded when they went off without him.
"The fact is," said Rabbit, "we've missed our way
somehow."
They were having a rest in a small sand-pit on the top
of the Forest. Pooh was getting rather tired of that sand-pit,
and suspected it of following them about, because whichever
direction they started in, they always ended up at it, and each
time, as it came through the mist at them, Rabbit said
triumphantly, "now I know where we are!" and Pooh said sadly,
"So do I," and Piglet said nothing. He had tried to think of
something to say, but the only thing he could think of was,
"Help, help!" and it seemed silly to say that, when he had Pooh
and Rabbit with him.
"Well," said Rabbit, after a long silence in which
nobody thanked him for the nice walk they were having, "we'd
better get on, I
suppose. Which way shall we try?"
"How would it be," said Pooh slowly, "if, as soon as
we're out of sight of this Pit, we try to find it again?"
"What's the good of that?" said Rabbit.
"Well," said Pooh, "we keep looking for Home and not
finding it, so I thought that if we looked for this Pit, we'd
be sure not to find it, which would be a Good Thing, because
then we might find something that we weren't looking for, which
might be just what we were looking for, really."
"I don't see much sense in that," said Rabbit.
"No," said Pooh humbly, "there isn't. But there was
going to be when I began it. It's just that something happened
to it on the way."
"If I walked away from this Pit, and then walked back
to it, of course I should find it."
"Well, I thought perhaps you wouldn't," said Pooh. "I
just thought."
"Try," said Piglet suddenly. "We'll wait here for you."
Rabbit gave a laugh to show how silly Piglet was, and
walked into the mist. After he had gone a hundred yards, he
turned and walked back again
. . . and after Pooh and Piglet had waited twenty minutes
for him, Pooh got up.
"I just thought," said Pooh. "Now then, Piglet, let's
go home."
"But, Pooh," cried Piglet, all excited, "do you know
the way?"
"No," said Pooh. "But there are twelve pots of honey in
my cupboard, and they've been calling to me for hours. I
couldn't hear them properly before, because Rabbit would talk,
but if nobody says anything except those twelve pots, I think,
Piglet, I shall know where they are calling from. Come on."
They walked off together; and for a long time Piglet
said nothing, so as not to interrupt the pots; and then
suddenly he made a squeaky noise . . . and an oo-noise . . .
because now he began to know where he was; but he still didn't
dare to say so out loud, in case he wasn't. And just when he
was getting so sure of himself that it didn't matter whether
the pots went on calling or not, there was a shout from in
front of them, and out of the mist came Christopher Robin.
"Oh, there you are," said Christopher Robin carelessly,
trying to pretend that he hadn't been Anxious.
"Here we are," said Pooh.
"Where's Rabbit?"
"I don't know," said Pooh.
"Oh--well, I expect Tigger will find him. He's sort of
looking for you all."
"Well," said Pooh, "I've got to go home for something,
and so has Piglet, because we haven't had it yet, and "
"I'll come and watch you," said Christopher Robin.
So he went home with Pooh, and watched him for quite a
long time... and all the time he was watching, Tigger was
tearing round the Forest
making loud yapping noises for Rabbit. And at last a very
Small and Sorry Rabbit heard him. And the Small and Sorry
Rabbit rushed through the mist at the noise, and it suddenly
turned into Tigger; a friendly Tigger, a Grand Tigger, a Large
and Helpful Tigger, a Tigger who bounced, if he bounced at all,
in just the beautiful way a Tigger ought to bounce.
"Oh, Tigger, I am glad to see you," cried Rabbit.
Chapter VIII. In which Piglet does
a very grand thing
HALF-WAY between Pooh's house and Piglet's house was a
Thoughtful Spot where they met sometimes when they had decided
to go and see each
other, and as it was warm and out of the wind they would
sit down there for a little and wonder what they would do now
that they had seen each other. One day when they had decided
not to do anything, Pooh made up a verse about it, so that
everybody should know what the place was for.
This warm and sunny Spot
Belongs to Pooh.
And here he wonders what
He's going to do.
Oh, bother, I forgot--
It's Piglet's too.
Now one autumn morning when the wind had blown all the
leaves off the trees in the night, and was trying to blow the
branches off, Pooh and Piglet were sitting in the Thoughtful
Spot and wondering.
"What I think," said Pooh, "is I think we'll go to Pooh
Corner and see Eeyore, because perhaps his house has been blown
down, and perhaps he'd like us to build it again."
"What I think," said Piglet, "is I think we'll go and
see Christopher Robin, only he won't be there, so we can't."
"Let's go and see everybody," said Pooh. "Because when
you've been walking in the wind for miles, and you suddenly go
into somebody's house, and he says, 'Hallo, Pooh, you're just
in time for a little smackerel of something,' and you are, then
it's what I call a Friendly Day."
Piglet thought that they ought to have a Reason for
going to see everybody, like Looking for Small or Organizing an
Expotition, if Pooh could think of something
Pooh could.
"We'll go because it's Thursday," he said, "and we'll
go to wish everybody a Very Happy Thursday. Come on, Piglet."
They got up; and when Piglet had sat down again,
because he didn't know the wind was so strong, and had been
helped up by Pooh, they started off. They went to Pooh's house
first, and luckily Pooh was at home just as they got there, so
he asked them in, and they had some, and then they went on to
Kanga's house, holding on to each other, and shouting "Isn't
it?" and "What?" and "I can't hear." By the time they got to
Kanga's house they were so buffeted that they stayed to lunch.
Just at first it seemed rather cold outside afterwards, so they
pushed on to Rabbit's as quickly as they could.
"We've come to wish you a Very Happy Thursday," said
Pooh, when he had gone in and out once or twice just to make
sure that he could get
out again.
"Why, what's going to happen on Thursday?" asked
Rabbit, and when Pooh had explained, and Rabbit, whose life was
made up of Important
Things, said, "Oh, I thought you'd really come about
something," they sat down for a little . . . and by-and-by Pooh
and Piglet went on again. The wind was behind them now, so they
didn't have to shout.
"Rabbit's clever," said Pooh thoughtfully.
"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit's clever."
"And he has Brain."
"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit has Brain."
There was a long silence.
"I suppose," said Pooh, "that that's why he never
understands anything."
Christopher Robin was at home by this time, because it
was the afternoon, and he was so glad to see them that they
stayed there until very nearly tea-time, and then they had a
Very Nearly tea, which is one you forget about afterwards, and
hurried on to Pooh Corner, so as to see Eeyore before it was
too late to have a Proper Tea with Owl.
"Hallo, Eeyore," they called out cheerfully.
"Ah!" said Eeyore. "Lost your way?"
"We just came to see you," said Piglet. "And to see how
your house was. Look, Pooh, it's still standing!"
"I know," said Eeyore. "Very odd. Somebody ought to
have come down and pushed it over."
"We wondered whether the wind would blow it down," said
Pooh.
"Ah, that's why nobody's bothered, I suppose. I thought
perhaps they'd forgotten."
"Well, we're very glad to see you, Eeyore, and now
we're going on to see Owl."
"That's right. You'll like Owl. He flew past a day or
two ago and noticed me. He didn't actually say anything, mind
you, but he knew it was me. Very friendly of him, I thought.
Encouraging."
Pooh and Piglet shuffled about a little and said,
"Well, good-bye, Eeyore" as lingeringly as they could, but they
had a long way to go, and wanted to be getting on.
"Good-bye," said Eeyore. "Mind you don't get blown
away, little Piglet. You'd be missed. People would say 'Where's
little Piglet been blown to?'--really wanting to know. Well,
good-bye. And thank you for happening to pass me."
"Good-bye," said Pooh and Piglet for the last time, and
they pushed on to Owl's house.
The wind was against them now, and Piglet's ears
streamed behind him like banners as he fought his way along,
and it seemed hours before he got them into the shelter of the
Hundred Acre Wood and they stood up straight again, to listen,
a little nervously, to the roaring of the gale among the
tree-tops. '
"Supposing a tree fell down, Pooh, when we were
underneath it?"
"Supposing it didn't," said Pooh after careful thought.
Piglet was comforted by this, and in a little while
they were knocking and ringing very cheerfully at Owl's door.
"Hallo, Owl," said Pooh. "I hope we're not too late
for-- I mean, how are you, Owl? Piglet and I just came to see
how you were, because it's Thursday."
"Sit down, Pooh, sit down, Piglet," said Owl kindly.
"Make yourselves comfortable."
They thanked him, and made themselves as comfortable as
they could.
"Because, you see, Owl," said Pooh, "we've been
hurrying, so as to be in time for--so as to see you before we
went away again."
Owl nodded solemnly.
"Correct me if I am wrong," he said, "but am I right in
supposing that it is a very Blusterous day outside?"
"Very," said Piglet, who was quietly thawing his ears,
and wishing that he was safely back in his own house.
"I thought so," said O-wl. "It was on just such a
blusterous day as this that my Uncle Robert, a portrait of whom
you see upon the wall on your right, Piglet, while returning in
the late forenoon from a-- What's that?"
There was a loud cracking noise.
"Look out!" cried Pooh. "Mind the clock! Out of the
way, Piglet! Piglet, I'm falling on you!"
"Help!" cried Piglet.
Pooh's side of the room was slowly tilting upwards and
his chair began sliding down on Piglet's. The clock slithered
gently along the mantelpiece, collecting vases on the way,
until they all crashed together on to what had once been the
floor, but was now trying to see what it looked like as a wall.
Uncle Robert, who was going to be the new hearthrug, and was
bringing the rest of his wall with him as carpet, met Piglet's
chair just as Piglet was expecting to leave it, and for a
little while it became very difficult to remember which was
really the north. When there was another loud crack
. . . Owl's room collected itself feverishly . . . and
there was silence.
In a corner of the room, the table-cloth began to
wriggle. Then it wrapped itself into a ball and rolled across
the room. Then it jumped up and down once or twice, and put out
two ears. It rolled across the room again, and unwound itself.
"Pooh," said Piglet nervously.
"Yes?" said one of the chairs.
"Where are we?"
"I'm not quite sure," said the chair.
"Are we--are we in Owl's House?"
"I think so, because we were just going to have tea,
and we hadn't had it."
"Oh!" said Piglet. "Well, did Owl always have a
letter-box in his ceiling?"
"Has he?"
Yes, look.
"I can't," said Pooh. "I'm face downwards under
something, and that, Piglet, is a very bad position for looking
at ceilings."
"Well, he has, Pooh."
"Perhaps he's changed it," said Pooh. "Just for a
change."
There was a disturbance behind the table in the other
corner of the room, and Owl was with them again.
"Ah, Piglet," said Owl, looking very much annoyed;
"where's Pooh?"
"I'm not quite sure," said Pooh.
Owl turned his voice, and frowned at as much of Pooh as
he could see.
"Pooh," said Owl severely, "did you do that?"
"No," said Pooh humbly. "I don't think so."
"Then who did?"
"I think it was the wind," said Piglet. "I think your
house has blown down."
"Oh, is that it? I thought it was Pooh."
"No," said Pooh.
"If it was the wind," said Owl, considering the matter,
"then it wasn't Pooh's fault. No blame can be attached to him."
With these kind words he flew up to look at his new ceiling.
"Piglet!" called Pooh in a loud whisper.
Piglet leant down to him.
"Yes, Pooh?"
"What did he say was attached to me?"
"He said he didn't blame you."
"Oh! I thought he meant-- Oh, I see."
"Owl," said Piglet, "come down and help Pooh." Owl, who
was admiring his letter-box, flew down again. Together they
pushed and pulled at the arm-chair, and in a little while Pooh
came out from underneath, and was able to look round him again.
"Well!" said Owl. "This is a nice state of things!"
"What are we going to do, Pooh? Can you think of
anything?" asked Piglet.
"Well, I had just thought of something," said Pooh. "It
was just a little thing I thought of." And he began to sing:
I lay on my chest
And I thought it best
To pretend I was having an evening rest;
I lay on my tum
And I tried to hum
But nothing particular seemed to come.
My face was flat
On the floor, and that
Is all very well for an acrobat;
But it doesn't seem fair
To a Friendly Bear
To stiffen him out with a basket-chair
And a sort of sqoze
Which grows and grows
Is not too nice for his poor old nose,
And a sort of squch
Is much too much
For his neck and his mouth and his ears and
such
"That was all," said Pooh.
Owl coughed in an unadmiring sort of way, and said
that, if Pooh was sure that was all, they could now give their
minds to the Problem of Escape.
"Because," said Owl, "we can't go out by what used to
be the front door. Something's fallen on it."
"But how else can you go out?" asked Piglet anxiously.
"That is the Problem, Piglet, to which I am asking Pooh
to give his mind."
Pooh sat on the floor which had once been a wall, and
gazed up at the ceiling which had once been another wall, with
a front door in it which had once been a front door, and tried
to give his mind to it.
"Could you fly up to the letter-box with Piglet on your
back?" he asked.
"No," said Piglet quickly. "He couldn't."
Owl explained about the Necessary Dorsal Muscles. He
had explained this to Pooh and Christopher Robin once before,
and had been waiting ever since for a chance to do it again,
because it is a thing which you can easily explain twice before
anybody knows what you are talking about.
"Because you see, Owl, if we could get Piglet into the
letter-box, he might squeeze through the place where the
letters come, and climb down the tree and run for help."
Piglet said hurriedly that he had been getting bigger
lately, and couldn't possibly, much as he would like to, and
Owl said that he had had his letter-box made bigger lately in
case he got bigger letters, so perhaps Piglet might, and Piglet
said, "But you said the necessary you-know-whats wouldn't," and
Owl said, "No, they won't, so it's no good thinking about it,"
and Piglet said "Then we'd better think of something else," and
began to at once. But Pooh's mind had gone back to the day when
he had saved Piglet from the flood, and everybody had admired
him so much; and as that didn't often happen, he thought he
would like it to happen again. And suddenly, just as it had
come before, an idea came to him.
"Owl," said Pooh, "I have thought of something."
"Astute and Helpful Bear," said Owl.
Pooh looked proud at being called a stout and helpful
bear, and said modestly that he just happened to think of it.
You tied a piece of string to Piglet, and you flew up to the
letter-box with the other end in your beak, and you pushed it
through the wire and brought it down to the floor, and you and
Pooh pulled hard at this end, and Piglet went slowly up at the
other end. And there you were.
"And there Piglet is," said Owl. "If the string doesn't
break."
"Supposing it does?" asked Piglet, really wanting to
know.
"Then we try another piece of string."
This was not very comforting to Piglet, because however
many pieces of string they tried pulling up with, it would
always be the same him coming down; but still, it did seem the
only thing to do. So with one last look back in his mind at all
the happy hours he had spent in the Forest not being, pulled up
to the ceiling by a piece of string, Piglet nodded bravely at
Pooh and said that it was a Very Clever pup-pup-pup Clever
pup-pup Plan.
"It won't break," whispered Pooh comfortingly, "because
you're a Small Animal, and I'll stand underneath, and if you
save us all, it will be a Very Grand Thing to talk about
afterwards, and perhaps I'll make up a Song, and people will
say 'It was so grand what Piglet did that a Respectful Pooh
Song was made about it!'"
Piglet felt much better after this, and when everything
was ready, and he found himself slowly going up to the ceiling,
he was so proud that he would have called out "Look at Me!" if
he hadn't been afraid that Pooh and Owl would let go of their
end of the string and look at him.
"Up we go!" said Pooh cheerfully.
"The ascent is proceeding as expected," said Owl
helpfully. Soon it was over. Piglet opened the letter-box and
climbed in. Then, having untied himself, he began to squeeze
into the slit, through which in the old days when front doors
were front doors, many an unexpected letter that WOL had
written to himself, had come slipping.
He squeezed and he sqoze, and then with one squze he
was out. Happy and excited he turned round to squeak a last
message to the prisoners.
"It's all right," he called through the letter-box.
"Your tree is blown right over, Owl, and there's a branch
across the door, but Christopher Robin and I can move it, and
we'll bring a rope for Pooh, and I'll go and tell him now, and
I can climb down quite easily, I mean it's dangerous but I can
do it all right, and Christopher Robin and I will be back in
about half-an-hour. Good-bye, Pooh!" And without waiting to
hear Pooh's answering "Good-bye, and thank you, Piglet," he was
off.
"Half-an-hour," said Owl, settling himself comfortably.
"That will just give me time to finish that story I was telling
you about my Uncle Robert
--a portrait of whom you see underneath you. Now let me
see, where was I? Oh, yes. It was on just such a blusterous day
as this that my Uncle Robert--"
Pooh closed his eyes.
Chapter IX. In which eeyore finds the Wolery
and Owl moves into it
POOH had wandered into the Hundred Acre Wood, and was
standing in front of what had once been Owl's House. It didn't
look at all like a house now; it looked like a tree which had
been blown down; and as soon as a house looks like that, it is
time you tried to find another one. Pooh had had a Mysterious
Missage underneath his front door that morning, saying, "I AM
SCERCHING FOR A NEW HOUSE FOR OWL SO HAD YOU RABBIT," and while
he was wondering what it meant, Rabbit had come in and read it
for him.
"I'm leaving one for all the others," said Rabbit, "and
telling them what it means, and they'll all search too. I'm in
a hurry, good-bye." And he had run off.
Pooh followed slowly. He had something better to do
than to find a new house for Owl; he had to make up a Pooh song
about the old one. Because he had promised Piglet days and days
ago that he would, and whenever he and Piglet had met since,
Piglet didn't actually say anything, but you knew at once why
he didn't; and if anybody mentioned Hums or Trees or String or
Storms-in-the-Night, Piglet's nose went all pink at the tip,
and he talked about something quite different in a hurried sort
of way.
"But it isn't Easy," said Pooh to himself, as he looked
at what had once been Owl's House. "Because Poetry and Hums
aren't things which you get, they're things which get you. And
all you can do is to go where they can find you."
He waited hopefully . . .
"Well," said Pooh after a long wait, "I shall begin
'Here lies a tree' because it does, and then I'll see what
happens."
This is what happened:
Here lies a tree which Owl (a bird)
Was fond of when it stood on end,
And Owl was talking to a friend
Called Me (in case you hadn't heard)
When something Oo occurred
For lo! the wind was blusterous
And flattened out his favourite tree;
And things looked bad for him and we--
Looked bad, I mean, for he and us--
I've never known them wuss
Then Piglet (PIGLET) thought a thing
"Courage!" he said "There's always hope
I want a thinnish piece of rope
Or, if there isn't any, bring
A thickish piece of string"
So to the letter-box he rose,
While Pooh and Owl said "Oh!" and "Hum!"
And where the letters always come
(Called "LETTERS ONLY") Piglet sqoze
His head and then his toes,
O gallant Piglet (PIGLET)! Ho!
Did Piglet tremble? Did he blinch?
No, no, he struggled inch by inch
Through LETTERS ONLY, as I know
Because I saw him go.
He ran and ran, and then he stood
And shouted, "Help for Owl, a bird,
And Pooh, a bear!" until he heard
The others coming through the wood
As quickly as they could
"Help-help and Rescue!" Piglet cried,
And showed the others where to go
[Sing ho! for Piglet (PIGLET) ho!]
And soon the door was opened wide,
And we were both outside !
Sing ho! for Piglet, ho!
Ho!
"So there it is," said Pooh, when he had sung this to
himself three times. "It's come different from what I thought
it would, but it's come. Now I must go and sing it to Piglet."
I AM SCERCHING FOR A NEW HOUSE FOR OWL SO HAD YOU RABBIT.
"What's all this?" said Eeyore.
Rabbit explained.
"What's the matter with his old house?"
Rabbit explained.
"Nobody tells me," said Eeyore. "Nobody keeps me
Informed. I make it seventeen days come Friday since anybody
spoke to me."
"It certainly isn't seventeen days--"
"Come Friday," explained Eeyore.
"And to-day's Saturday," said Rabbit. "So that would
make it eleven days. And I was here myself a week ago."
"Not conversing," said Eeyore. "Not first one and then
the other. You said 'Hallo' and Flashed Past. I saw your tail a
hundred yards up the hill as I was meditating my reply. I had
thought of saying 'What?'--but, of course, it was then too
late."
"Well, I was in a hurry."
"No Give and Take," Eeyore went on. "No Exchange of
Thought. 'Hallo--What'-- I mean, it gets you nowhere,
particularly if the other person's tail is only just in sight
for the second half of the conversation."
"It's your fault, Eeyore. You've never been to see any
of us. You just stay here in this one corner of the Forest
waiting for the others to come to you. Why don't you go to them
sometimes?"
Eeyore was silent for a little while, thinking.
"There may be something in what you say, Rabbit," he
said at last. "I have been neglecting you. I must move about
more. I must come and go."
"That's right, Eeyore. Drop in on any of us at any
time, when you feel like it."
"Thank-you, Rabbit. And if anybody says in a Loud Voice
'Bother, it's Eeyore,' I can drop out again."
Rabbit stood on one leg for a moment.
"Well," he said, "I must be going. I am rather busy
this morning."
"Good-bye," said Eeyore.
"What? Oh, good-bye. And if you happen to come across a
good house for Owl, you must let us know."
"I will give my mind to it," said Eeyore.
Rabbit went.
Pooh had found Piglet, and they were walking back to
the Hundred Acre Wood together.
"Piglet," said Pooh a little shyly, after they had
walked for some time without saying anything.
"Yes, Pooh?"
"Do you remember when I said that a Respectful Pooh
Song might be written about You Know What?"
"Did you, Pooh?" said Piglet, getting a little pink
round the nose. "Oh, yes, I believe you did."
"It's been written, Piglet."
The pink went slowly up Piglet's nose to his ears, and
settled there.
"Has it, Pooh?" he asked huskily. "About-- about-- That
Time When?-- Do you mean really written?"
"Yes, Piglet."
The tips of Piglet's ears glowed suddenly, and he tried
to say something; but even after he had husked once or twice,
nothing came out. So Pooh went on:
"There are seven verses in it."
"Seven?" said Piglet as carelessly as he could. "You
don't often get seven verses in a Hum, do you, Pooh?"
"Never," said Pooh. "I don't suppose it's ever been
heard of before."
"Do the Others know yet?" asked Piglet, stopping - for
a moment to pick up a stick and throw it away.
"No," said Pooh. "And I wondered which you would like
best: for me to hum it now, or to wait till we find the others,
and then hum it to all of you?" Piglet thought for a little.
"I think what I'd like best, Pooh, is I'd like you to
hum it to me now-and--and then to hum it to all of us. Because
then Everybody would hear it, but I could say 'Oh, yes, Pooh's
told me,' and pretend not to be listening."
So Pooh hummed it to him, all the seven verses, and
Piglet said nothing, but just stood and glowed. For never
before had anyone sung ho for Piglet (PIGLET) ho all by
himself. When it was over, he wanted to ask for one of the
verses over again, but didn't quite like to. It was the verse
beginning "O gallant Piglet," and it seemed to him a very
thoughtful way of beginning a piece of poetry.
"Did I really do all that?" he said at last.
"Well," said Pooh, "in poetry--in a piece of
poetry--well, you did it, Piglet, because the poetry says you
did. And that's how people know."
"Oh!" said Piglet. "Because I--I thought I did blinch a
little. Just at first. And it says, 'Did he blinch no no.'
That's why."
"You only blinched inside," said Pooh, "and that's the
bravest way for a Very Small Animal not to blinch that there
is."
Piglet sighed with happiness, and began to think about
himself. He was BRAVE. . . .
When they got to Owl's old house, they found everybody
else there except Eeyore. Christopher Robin was telling them
what to do, and Rabbit was telling them again directly
afterwards, in case they hadn't heard, and then they were all
doing it. They had got a rope and were pulling Owl's chairs and
pictures and things out of his old house so as to be ready to
put them into his new one. Kanga was down below tying the
things on, and calling out to Owl, "You won't want this dirty
old dishcloth any more, will you, and what about this carpet,
it's all in holes," and Owl was calling back indignantly, "Of
course I do! It's just a question of arranging the furniture
properly, and it isn't a dish-cloth, it's my shawl." Every now
and then Roo fell in and came back on the rope with the next
article, which flustered Kanga a little because she never knew
where to look for him. So she got cross
with Owl and said that his house was a Disgrace, all damp
and dirty, and it was quite time it did tumble down. Look at
that horrid bunch of toadstools growing out of the corner there
! So Owl looked down, a little surprised because he didn't know
about this, and then gave a short sarcastic laugh, and
explained that that was his sponge, and that if people didn't
know a perfectly ordinary bath-sponge when they saw it, things
were coming to a pretty pass. "Well!" said Kanga, and Roo fell
in quickly, crying, "I must see Owl's sponge! Oh, there it is!
Oh, Owl! Owl, it isn't a sponge, it's a spudge! Do you know
what a spudge is, Owl? It's when your sponge gets all--" and
Kanga said, "Roo, dear!" very quickly, because that's not the
way to talk to anybody who can spell TUESDAY.
But they were all quite happy when Pooh and Piglet came
along, and they stopped working in order to have a little rest
and listen to Pooh's new song. So then they all told Pooh how
good it was, and Piglet said carelessly, It is good, isn't it?
I mean as a song."
"And what about the new house?" asked Pooh. "Have you
found it, Owl?"
"He's found a name for it," said Christopher Robin,
lazily nibbling at a piece of grass, "so now all he wants is
the house."
"I am calling it this," said Owl importantly, and he
showed them what he had been making. It was a square piece of
board with the name of the house painted on it:
THE WOLERY
It was at this exciting moment that something came
through the trees, and bumped into Owl. The board fell to the
ground, and Piglet and Roo bent over it eagerly.
"Oh. it's you," said Owl crossly.
"Hallo, Eeyore!" said Rabbit. "There you are! Where
have you been?" Eeyore took no notice of them.
"Good morning, Christopher Robin," he said brushing
away Roo and Piglet, and sitting down on THE WOLERY. "Are we
alone?"
"Yes," said Christopher Robin, smiling to himself. "I
have been told--the news has worked through to my corner of the
Forest--the damp bit down on the right which nobody wants--that
a certain Person is looking for a house. I have found one for
him."
"Ah, well done," said Rabbit kindly.
Eeyore looked round slowly at him, and then turned back
to Christopher Robin.
"We have been joined by something," he said in a loud
whisper. "But no matter. We can leave it behind. If you will
come with me, Christopher Robin, I will show you the house."
Christopher Robin jumped up.
"Come on, Pooh," he said.
"Come on, Tigger!" cried Roo.
"Shall we go, Owl?" said Rabbit.
"Wait a moment," said Owl, picking up his notice-board,
which had just come into sight again.
Eeyore waved them back.
"Christopher Robin and I are going for a Short Walk,"
he said, "not a Jostle. If he likes to bring Pooh and Piglet
with him, I shall be glad of their company, but one must be
able to Breathe."
"That's all right," said Rabbit, rather glad to be left
in charge of something. "We'll go on getting the things out.
Now then, Tigger, where's that rope? What's the matter, Owl?"
Owl who had just discovered that his new address was
THE SMEAR, coughed at Eeyore sternly, but said nothing, and
Eeyore, with most of
THE WOLERY behind him, marched off with his friends.
So, in a little while, they came to the house which
Eeyore had found, and just before they came to it, Piglet was
nudging Pooh, and Pooh was nudging Piglet, and they were
saying, "It is!" and "It can't be!" and "It's really!" to each
other
"There!" said Eeyore proudly, stopping them outside
Piglet's house. "And the name on it, and everything!"
"Oh!" cried Christopher Robin, wondering whether to
laugh or what.
"Just the house for Owl. Don't you think so, little
Piglet?"
And then Piglet did a Noble Thing, and he did it in a
sort of dream, while he was thinking of all the wonderful words
Pooh had hummed about him.
"Yes, it's just the house for Owl," he said grandly.
"And I hope he'll be very happy in it." And then he gulped
twice, because he had been very happy in it himself.
"What do you think, Christopher Robin?" asked Eeyore a
little anxiously, feeling that something wasn't quite right.
Christopher Robin had a question to ask first, and he
was wondering how to ask it.
"Well," he said at last, "it's a very nice house, and
if your own house is blown down, you must go somewhere else,
mustn't you, Piglet? What would you do, if your house was blown
down?"
Before Piglet could think, Pooh answered for him.
"He'd come and live with me," said Pooh, "wouldn't you,
Piglet?"
Piglet squeezed his paw.
"Thank you, Pooh," he said, "I should love to."
Chapter X. In which Christopher Robin and pooh
come to an enchanted place, and we leave them there
CHRISTOPHER ROBIN was going away. Nobody knew why he was
going; nobody knew where he was going; indeed, nobody even knew
why he knew that Christopher Robin was going away. But somehow
or other everybody in the Forest felt that it was happening at
last. Even Smallest-of-all, a friend-and-relation of Rabbit's
who thought he had once seen Christopher Robin's foot, but
couldn't be quite sure because perhaps it was something else,
even S. of A. told himself that Things were going to be
Different; and Late and Early, two other friends-and-relations,
said, "Well, Early?" and "Well, Late?" to each other in such a
hopeless sort of way that it really didn't seem any good
waiting for the answer.
One day when he felt that he couldn't wait any longer,
Rabbit brained out a Notice, and this is what it said:
"Notice a meeting of everybody will meet at the House
at Pooh Corner to pass a Rissolution By Order Keep to the Left
Signed Rabbit."
He had to write this out two or three times before he
could get the rissolution to look like what he thought it was
going to when he began to spell it; but, when at last it was
finished, he took it round to everybody and read it out to
them. And they all said they would come.
"Well," said Eeyore that afternoon, when he saw them
all walking up to his house, "this is a surprise. Am I asked
too?"
"Don't mind Eeyore," whispered Rabbit to Pooh. "I told
him all about it this morning."
Everybody said "How-do-you-do" to Eeyore, and Eeyore
said that he didn't, not to notice, and then they sat down; and
as soon as they were all sitting down, Rabbit stood up again.
"We all know why we're here," he said, "but I have
asked my friend Eeyore--"
"That's Me," said Eeyore. "Grand."
"I have asked him to Propose a Rissolution." And he sat
down again. "Now then, Eeyore," he said.
"Don't Bustle me," said Eeyore, getting up slowly.
"Don't now-then me." He took a piece of paper from behind his
ear, and unfolded it. "Nobody knows anything about this," he
went on. "This is a Surprise." He coughed in an important way,
and began again: "What-nots and Etceteras, before I begin, or
perhaps I should say, before I end, I have a piece of Poetry to
read to you. Hitherto--hitherto--a long word meaning--well,
you'll see what it means directly--hitherto, as I was saying,
all the Poetry in the Forest has been written by Pooh, a Bear
with a Pleasing Manner but a Positively Startling Lack of
Brain. The Poem which I am now about to read to you was written
by Eeyore, or Myself, in a Quiet Moment. If somebody will take
Roo's bull's-eye away from him, and wake up Owl, we shall all
be able to enjoy it. I call it--POEM." This was it:
Christopher Robin is going
At least I think he is
Where?
Nobody knows
But he is going--
I mean he goes
(To rhyme with knows)
Do we care ?
(To rhyme with where)
We do
Very much
(I haven't got a rhyme for that
"is" in the second line yet.
Bother.)
(Now I haven't got a rhyme for
bother.. Bother.)
Those two bothers will have
to rhyme with each other
Buther
The fact is this is more difficult
than I thought,
I ought--
(Very good indeed)
I ought
To begin again,
But it is easier
To stop
Christopher Robin, good-bye
I
(Good)
I
And all your friends
Sends--
I mean all your friend
Send--
(Very awkward this, it keeps
going wrong)
Well, anyhow, we send
Our love
END
"If anybody wants to clap," said Eeyore when he had
read this, "now is the time to do it."
They all clapped.
"Thank you," said Eeyore. "Unexpected and gratifying,
if a little lacking in Smack."
"It's much better than mine," said Pooh admiringly, and
he really thought it is.
"Well," explained Eeyore modestly, "it was meant to
be."
"The rissolution," said Rabbit, "is that we all sign
it, and take it to Christopher Robin."
So it was signed PooH, WOL, PIGLET, EOR, RABBIT, KANGA,
BLOT, SMUDGE, and they all went off to Christopher Robin's
house with it.
"Hallo, everybody," said Christopher Robin--
"Hallo, Pooh."
They all said "Hello," and felt awkward and unhappy
suddenly, because it was a sort of goodbye they were saying,
and they didn't want to think about it. So they stood around,
and waited for somebody else to speak, and they nudged each
other, and said "Go on," and gradually Eeyore was nudged to the
front, and the others crowded behind him.
"What is it, Eeyore?" asked Christopher Robin.
Eeyore swished his tail from side to side, so as to
encourage himself, and began.
"Christopher Robin," he said, "we've come to say-to
give you-it's called-written by-but we've all--because we've
heard, I mean we all know--well, you see, it's--we--you--well,
that, to put it as shortly as possible, is what it is." He
turned round angrily on the others and said, "Everybody crowds
round so in this Forest. There's no Space. I never saw a more
Spreading lot of animals in my life, and all in the wrong
places. Can't you see that Christopher Robin wants to be alone?
I'm going." And he humped off.
Not quite knowing why, the others began edging away,
and when Christopher Robin had finished reading POEM, and was
looking up to say "Thank you," only Pooh was left.
"It's a comforting sort of thing to have," said
Christopher Robin, folding up the paper, and putting it in his
pocket. "Come on, Pooh," and he walked off quickly.
"Where are we going?" said Pooh, hurrying after him,
and wondering whether it was to be an Explore or a
What-shall-I-do-about-you-know-what.
"Nowhere," said Christopher Robin.
So they began going there, and after they had walked a
little way Christopher Robin said:
"What do you like doing best in the world, Pooh?"
"Well," said Pooh, "what I like best?" and then he had
to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very
good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to
eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know
what it was called. And then he thought that being with
Christopher Robin was a very good thing to do, and having
Piglet near was a very friendly thing to have: and so, when he
had thought it all out, he said, "What I like best in the whole
world is Me and Piglet going to see You, and You saying 'What
about a little something?' and Me saying,' Well, I shouldn't
mind a little something, should you, Piglet,' and it being a
hummy sort of day outside, and birds singing."
"I like that too," said Christopher Robin, "but what I
like doing best is Nothing."
"How do you do Nothing?" asked Pooh, after he had
wondered for a long time.
"Well, it's when people call out at you just as you're
going off to do it 'What are you going to do, Christopher
Robin?' and you say 'Oh, nothing,' and then you go and do it."
"Oh, I see," said Pooh.
"This is a nothing sort of thing that we're doing now."
"Oh, I see," said Pooh again.
"It means just going along, listening to all the things
you can't hear, and not bothering."
"Oh!" said Pooh.
They walked on, thinking of This and That, and
by-and-by they came to an enchanted place on the very top of
the Forest called Galleons Lap, which is sixty-something trees
in a circle; and Christopher Robin knew that it was enchanted
because nobody had ever been able to count whether it was
sixty-three or sixty-four, not even when he tied a piece of
string round each tree after he had counted it. Being
enchanted, its floor was not like the floor the Forest, gorse
and bracken and heather, but close-set grass, quiet and smooth
and green. It was the only place in the Forest where you could
sit down carelessly, without getting up again almost at once
and looking for some where else. Sitting there they could see
the whole world spread out until it reached the sky, and
whatever there was all the world over was with them in Galleons
Lap.
Suddenly Christopher Robin began to tell Pooh about
some of the things: People called Kings and Queens and
something called Factors, and a place called Europe, and an
island in the middle of the sea where no ships came, and how
you make a Suction Pump (if you want to), and when Knights were
Knighted, and what comes from Brazil. And Pooh, his back
against one of the sixty-something trees and his paws folded in
front of him, said "Oh!" and "I didn't know," and thought how
wonderful it would be to have a Real Brain which could tell you
things. And by-and-by Christopher Robin came to an end of the
things, and was silent, and he sat there looking out over the
world, and wishing it wouldn't stop.
But Pooh was thinking too, and he said suddenly to
Christopher Robin:
"Is it a very Grand thing to be an Afternoon, what you
said?"
"A what?" said Christopher Robin lazily, as he listened
to something else.
"On a horse," explained Pooh.
"A Knight?"
"Oh, was that it?" said Pooh. "I thought it was a-- Is
it as Grand as a King and Factors and all the other things you
said?"
"Well, it's not as grand as a King," said Christopher
Robin, and then, as Pooh seemed disappointed, he added quickly,
"but it's grander than Factors."
"Could a Bear be one?"
"Of course he could!" said Christopher Robin. "I'll
make you one." And he took a stick and touched Pooh on the
shoulder, and said, "Rise, Sir Pooh de Bear, most faithful of
all my Knights."
So Pooh rose and sat down and said "Thank you," which
is a proper thing to say when you have been made a Knight, and
he went into a dream again, in which he and Sir Pump and Sir
Brazil and Factors lived together with a horse, and were
faithful Knights (all except Factors, who looked after the
horse) to Good King Christopher Robin . . . and every now and
then he shook his head, and said to himself, "I'm not getting
it right." Then he began to think of all the things Christopher
Robin would want to tell him when he came back from wherever he
was going to, and how muddling it would be for a Bear of Very
Little Brain to try and get them right in his mind. "So,
perhaps," he said sadly to himself, "Christopher Robin won't
tell me
any more," and he wondered if being a Faithful Knight meant
that you just went on being faithful without being told things.
Then, suddenly again, Christopher Robin, who was Still
looking at the world with his chin in his hands, called out
"Pooh!"
"Yes?" said Pooh.
"When I'm--when-- Pooh!"
"Yes, Christopher Robin?"
"I'm not going to do Nothing any more."
"Never again?"
"Well, not so much. They don't let you."
Pooh waited for him to go on, but he was silent again.
"Yes, Christopher Robin?" said Pooh helpfully.
"Pooh, when I'm--you know--when I'm not doing Nothing,
will you come up here sometimes?"
"Just Me?"
"Yes, Pooh."
"Will you be here too?"
"Yes, Pooh, I will be really. I promise I will be,
Pooh."
"That's good," said Pooh.
"Pooh, promise you won't forget about me, ever. Not
even when I'm a hundred."
Pooh thought for a little.
"How old shall I be then?"
"Ninety-nine."
Pooh nodded.
"I promise," he said.
Still with his eyes on the world Christopher Robin put
out a hand and felt for Pooh's paw.
"Pooh," said Christopher Robin earnestly, "if I--if I'm
not quite" he stopped and tried again --". Pooh, whatever
happens, you will understand, won't you?"
"Understand what?"
"Oh, nothing." He laughed and jumped to his feet. "Come
on!"
"Where?" said Pooh.
"Anywhere," said Christopher Robin.
So they went off together. But wherever they go, and
whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on
the top of the Forest a little boy and his Bear will always be
playing.
Last-modified: Fri, 21 Nov 1997 15:57:12 GMT