Winnie-the-Pooh
"Thank you, Pooh," answered Eeyore. "You're a real friend," said he.
"Not like Some," he said.
So Winnie-the-Pooh went off to find Eeyore's tail.
It was a fine spring morning in the forest as he started out. Little
soft clouds played happily in a blue sky, skipping from time to time in
front of the sun as if they had come to put it out, and then sliding
away suddenly so that the next might have his turn. Through them and
between them the sun shone bravely; and a copse which had worn its firs
all the year round seemed old and dowdy now beside the new green lace
which the beeches had put on so prettily. Through copse and spinney
marched Bear; down open slopes of gorse and heather, over rocky beds of
streams, up steep banks of sandstone into the heather again; and so at
last, tired and hungry, to the Hundred Acre Wood. For it was in the
Hundred Acre Wood that Owl lived.
"And if anyone knows anything about anything," said Bear to himself,
"it's Owl who knows something about something," he said, "or my name's
not Winnie-the-Pooh," he said. "Which it is," he added. "So there you
are."
Owl lived at The Chestnuts, an old-world residence of great charm, which
was grander than anybody else's, or seemed so to Bear, because it had
both a knocker _and_ a bell-pull. Underneath the knocker there was a
notice which said:
PLES RING IF AN RNSER IS REQIRD.
Underneath the bell-pull there was a notice which said:
PLEZ CNOKE IF AN RNSR IS NOT REQID.
These notices had been written by Christopher Robin, who was the only
one in the forest who could spell; for Owl, wise though he was in many
ways, able to read and write and spell his own name WOL, yet somehow
went all to pieces over delicate words like MEASLES and BUTTEREDTOAST.
Winnie-the-Pooh read the two notices very carefully, first from left to
right, and afterwards, in case he had missed some of it, from right to
left. Then, to make quite sure, he knocked and pulled the knocker, and
he pulled and knocked the bell-rope, and he called out in a very loud
voice, "Owl! I require an answer! It's Bear speaking." And the door
opened, and Owl looked out.
"Hallo, Pooh," he said. "How's things?"
"Terrible and Sad," said Pooh, "because Eeyore, who is a friend of mine,
has lost his tail. And he's Moping about it. So could you very kindly
tell me how to find it for him?"
"Well," said Owl, "the customary procedure in such cases is as follows."
"What does Crustimoney Proseedcake mean?" said Pooh. "For I am a Bear of
Very Little Brain, and long words Bother me."
"It means the Thing to Do."
"As long as it means that, I don't mind," said Pooh humbly.
"The thing to do is as follows. First, Issue a Reward. Then----"
"Just a moment," said Pooh, holding up his paw. "_What_ do we do to
this--what you were saying? You sneezed just as you were going to tell
me."
"I _didn't_ sneeze."
"Yes, you did, Owl."
"Excuse me, Pooh, I didn't. You can't sneeze without knowing it."
"Well, you can't know it without something having been sneezed."
"What I _said_ was, 'First _Issue_ a Reward'."
"You're doing it again," said Pooh sadly.
"A Reward!" said Owl very loudly. "We write a notice to say that we will
give a large something to anybody who finds Eeyore's tail."
"I see, I see," said Pooh, nodding his head. "Talking about large
somethings," he went on dreamily, "I generally have a small something
about now--about this time in the morning," and he looked wistfully at
the cupboard in the corner of Owl's parlour; "just a mouthful of
condensed milk or whatnot, with perhaps a lick of honey----"
"Well, then," said Owl, "we write out this notice, and we put it up all
over the forest."
"A lick of honey," murmured Bear to himself, "or--or not, as the case
may be." And he gave a deep sigh, and tried very hard to listen to what
Owl was saying.
But Owl went on and on, using longer and longer words, until at last he
came back to where he started, and he explained that the person to write
out this notice was Christopher Robin.
"It was he who wrote the ones on my front door for me. Did you see them,
Pooh?"
For some time now Pooh had been saying "Yes" and "No" in turn, with his
eyes shut, to all that Owl was saying, and having said, "Yes, yes," last
time, he said "No, not at all," now, without really knowing what Owl was
talking about.
"Didn't you see them?" said Owl, a little surprised. "Come and look at
them now."
So they went outside. And Pooh looked at the knocker and the notice
below it, and he looked at the bell-rope and the notice below it, and
the more he looked at the bell-rope, the more he felt that he had seen
something like it, somewhere else, sometime before.
"Handsome bell-rope, isn't it?" said Owl.
Pooh nodded.
"It reminds me of something," he said, "but I can't think what. Where
did you get it?"
"I just came across it in the Forest. It was hanging over a bush, and I
thought at first somebody lived there, so I rang it, and nothing
happened, and then I rang it again very loudly, and it came off in my
hand, and as nobody seemed to want it, I took it home, and----"
"Owl," said Pooh solemnly, "you made a mistake. Somebody did want it."
"Who?"
"Eeyore. My dear friend Eeyore. He was--he was fond of it."
"Fond of it?"
"Attached to it," said Winnie-the-Pooh sadly.
* * * * *
So with these words he unhooked it, and carried it back to Eeyore; and
when Christopher Robin had nailed it on in its right place again, Eeyore
frisked about the forest, waving his tail so happily that
Winnie-the-Pooh came over all funny, and had to hurry home for a little
snack of something to sustain him. And, wiping his mouth half an hour
afterwards, he sang to himself proudly:
_Who found the Tail?_
"I," said Pooh,
"At a quarter to two
(Only it was quarter to eleven really),
_I_ found the Tail!"
CHAPTER V
IN WHICH PIGLET MEETS A HEFFALUMP
One day, when Christopher Robin and Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet were
all talking together, Christopher Robin finished the mouthful he was
eating and said carelessly: "I saw a Heffalump to-day, Piglet."
"What was it doing?" asked Piglet.
"Just lumping along," said Christopher Robin. "I don't think it saw
_me_."
"I saw one once," said Piglet. "At least, I think I did," he said. "Only
perhaps it wasn't."
"So did I," said Pooh, wondering what a Heffalump was like.
"You don't often see them," said Christopher Robin carelessly.
"Not now," said Piglet.
"Not at this time of year," said Pooh.
Then they all talked about something else, until it was time for Pooh
and Piglet to go home together. At first as they stumped along the path
which edged the Hundred Acre Wood, they didn't say much to each other;
but when they came to the stream and had helped each other across the
stepping stones, and were able to walk side by side again over the
heather, they began to talk in a friendly way about this and that, and
Piglet said, "If you see what I mean, Pooh," and Pooh said, "It's just
what I think myself, Piglet," and Piglet said, "But, on the other hand,
Pooh, we must remember," and Pooh said, "Quite true, Piglet, although I
had forgotten it for the moment." And then, just as they came to the Six
Pine Trees, Pooh looked round to see that nobody else was listening, and
said in a very solemn voice:
"Piglet, I have decided something."
"What have you decided, Pooh?"
"I have decided to catch a Heffalump."
Pooh nodded his head several times as he said this, and waited for
Piglet to say "How?" or "Pooh, you couldn't!" or something helpful of
that sort, but Piglet said nothing. The fact was Piglet was wishing that
_he_ had thought about it first.
"I shall do it," said Pooh, after waiting a little longer, "by means of
a trap. And it must be a Cunning Trap, so you will have to help me,
Piglet."
"Pooh," said Piglet, feeling quite happy again now, "I will." And then
he said, "How shall we do it?" and Pooh said, "That's just it. How?" And
then they sat down together to think it out.
Pooh's first idea was that they should dig a Very Deep Pit, and then the
Heffalump would come along and fall into the Pit, and----
"Why?" said Piglet.
"Why what?" said Pooh.
"Why would he fall in?"
Pooh rubbed his nose with his paw, and said that the Heffalump might be
walking along, humming a little song, and looking up at the sky,
wondering if it would rain, and so he wouldn't see the Very Deep Pit
until he was half-way down, when it would be too late.
Piglet said that this was a very good Trap, but supposing it were
raining already?
Pooh rubbed his nose again, and said that he hadn't thought of that. And
then he brightened up, and said that, if it were raining already, the
Heffalump would be looking at the sky wondering if it would _clear up_,
and so he wouldn't see the Very Deep Pit until he was half-way
down.... When it would be too late.
Piglet said that, now that this point had been explained, he thought it
was a Cunning Trap.
Pooh was very proud when he heard this, and he felt that the Heffalump
was as good as caught already, but there was just one other thing which
had to be thought about, and it was this. _Where should they dig the
Very Deep Pit?_
Piglet said that the best place would be somewhere where a Heffalump
was, just before he fell into it, only about a foot farther on.
"But then he would see us digging it," said Pooh.
"Not if he was looking at the sky."
"He would Suspect," said Pooh, "if he happened to look down." He thought
for a long time and then added sadly, "It isn't as easy as I thought. I
suppose that's why Heffalumps hardly _ever_ get caught."
"That must be it," said Piglet.
They sighed and got up; and when they had taken a few gorse prickles out
of themselves they sat down again; and all the time Pooh was saying to
himself, "If only I could _think_ of something!" For he felt sure that a
Very Clever Brain could catch a Heffalump if only he knew the right way
to go about it.
"Suppose," he said to Piglet, "_you_ wanted to catch _me_, how would you
do it?"
"Well," said Piglet, "I should do it like this. I should make a Trap,
and I should put a Jar of Honey in the Trap, and you would smell it, and
you would go in after it, and----"
"And I would go in after it," said Pooh excitedly, "only very carefully
so as not to hurt myself, and I would get to the Jar of Honey, and I
should lick round the edges first of all, pretending that there wasn't
any more, you know, and then I should walk away and think about it a
little, and then I should come back and start licking in the middle of
the jar, and then----"
"Yes, well never mind about that. There you would be, and there I should
catch you. Now the first thing to think of is, What do Heffalumps like?
I should think acorns, shouldn't you? We'll get a lot of----I say, wake
up, Pooh!"
Pooh, who had gone into a happy dream, woke up with a start, and said
that Honey was a much more trappy thing than Haycorns. Piglet didn't
think so; and they were just going to argue about it, when Piglet
remembered that, if they put acorns in the Trap, _he_ would have to find
the acorns, but if they put honey, then Pooh would have to give up some
of his own honey, so he said, "All right, honey then," just as Pooh
remembered it too, and was going to say, "All right, haycorns."
"Honey," said Piglet to himself in a thoughtful way, as if it were now
settled. "_I'll_ dig the pit, while _you_ go and get the honey."
"Very well," said Pooh, and he stumped off.
As soon as he got home, he went to the larder; and he stood on a chair,