The House at Pooh Corner, Page 6

  “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 today,” 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 all 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 sai
d ‘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. But 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 Seven

  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, and 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 unfinding 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 know, 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 tomorrow, 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. Tomorrow, or whenever it is. Come on. He’s waiting for us.”