Alan Milne - The house at Pooh Corner

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:

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."

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:

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:

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: