Winnie the Pooh - Milne Alan Alexander. Страница 2

Winnie-the-Pooh sat down at the foot of the tree, put his head between his paws

and began to think.

First of all he said to himself: "That buzzing-noise means something. You don't get a buzzing-noise like that, just buzzing and buzzing, without its meaning something. If there's a buzzing-noise, somebody's making a buzzing-noise, and the only reason for making a buzzing-noise that I know of is because you're a

Then he thought another long time, and said: "And the only reason for being a

And then he got up, and said: "And the only reason for making honey is so as I

He climbed and he climbed and he climbed and as he climbed he sang a little song to himself. It went like this:

Then he climbed a little further... and a little further... and then just a little further. By that time he had thought of another song.

It's a very funny thought that, if Bears were Bees,

They'd build their nests at the bottom of trees.

And that being so (if the Bees were Bears),

He was getting rather tired by this time, so that is why he sang a Complaining

Song. He was nearly there now, and if he just s t o o d o n t h a t branch...

"Oh, help!" said Pooh, as he dropped ten feet on the branch below him.

"If only I hadn't-" he said, as he bounced twenty feet on to the next branch.

"You see, what I meant to do," he explained, as he turned head-over-heels, and crashed on to another branch thirty feet below, "what I meant to do-"

"Of course, it was rather-" he admitted, as he slithered very quickly through

"It all comes, I suppose," he decided, as he said good-bye to the last branch, spun round three times, and flew gracefully into a gorse-bush, "it all comes of liking honey so much. Oh, help!"

He crawled out of the gorse-bush, brushed the prickles from his nose, and began to think again. And the first person he thought of was Christopher Robin.

("Was that me?" said Christopher Robin in an awed voice, hardly daring to

believe it.

Christopher Robin said nothing, but his eyes got larger and larger, and his face

So Winnie-the-Pooh went round to his friend Christopher Robin, who lived behind

"Good morning, Christopher Robin," he said.

"Good morning, Winnie-ther-Pooh," said you.

"I wonder if you've got such a thing as a balloon about you?"

"Yes, I just said to myself coming along: 'I wonder if Christopher Robin has such a thing as a balloon about him?' I just said it to myself, thinking of balloons, and wondering."

Winnie-the-Pooh looked round to see that nobody was listening, put his paw to

"I do," said Pooh.

Well, it just happened that you had been to a party the day before at the house of your friend Piglet, and you had balloons at the party. You had had a big green balloon; and one of Rabbit's relations had had a big blue one, and had left it behind, being really too young to go to a party at all; and so you had

brought the green one and the blue one home with you.

"Which one would you like?" you asked Pooh. He put his head between his paws and

"It's like this," he said. "When you go after honey with a balloon, the great thing is not to let the bees know you're coming. Now, if you have a green balloon, they might think you were only part of the tree, and not notice you, and if you have a blue balloon, they might think you were only part of the sky, and not notice you, and the question is: Which is most likely?"

"Wouldn't they notice you underneath the balloon?" you asked.

"They might or they might not," said Winnie-the-Pooh. "You never can tell with bees." He thought for a moment and said: "I shall try to look like a small black cloud. That will deceive them."

"Then you had better have the blue balloon," you said; and so it was decided.

Well, you both went out with the blue balloon, and you took your gun with you, just in case, as you always did, and Winnie-the-Pooh went to a very muddy place that he knew of, and rolled and rolled until he was black all over; and then, when the balloon was blown up as big as big, and you and Pooh were both holding on to the string, you let go suddenly, and Pooh Bear floated gracefully up into the sky, and stayed there-level with the top of the tree and about twenty feet