The house at Pooh Corner - Milne Alan Alexander. Страница 17

"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 Woleryand 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."

"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."