Alan Alexander Milne

It is the best way to write poetry, letting things come.’

("What does 'under the name' mean?" asked Christopher Robin. "It means he had the name over the door in gold letters, and lived under it."

So for a week Christopher Robin read that sort of book at the North end of Pooh, and Rabbit hung his washing on the South end …

and in between Bear felt himself getting slenderer and slenderer. And at the end of the week Christopher Robin said, ‘Now!’

So he took hold of Pooh’s front paws and Rabbit took hold of Christopher Robin, and all Rabbit’s friends and relations took hold of Rabbit, and they all pulled together. …

And for a long time Pooh only said ‘Ow!’. …

And ‘Oh!’. …

And then, all of a sudden, he said ‘Pop!’ just as if a cork were coming out of a bottle.

And Christopher Robin and Rabbit and all Rabbit’s friends and relations went head-over-heels backwards … and on the top of them came Winnie-the-Pooh – free!

So, with a nod of thanks to his friends, he went on with his walk through the forest, humming proudly to himself. But Christopher Robin looked after him lovingly, and said to himself, ‘Silly old Bear!’

So they went on, feeling just a little anxious now, in case the three animals in front of them were of Hostile Intent. And Piglet wished very much that his grandfather T. W. were there, instead of elsewhere, and Pooh thought how nice it would be if they met Christopher Robin suddenly but quite accidentally, and only because he liked Christopher Robin so much. And then, all of a sudden, Winnie-the-Pooh stopped again, and licked the tip of his nose in a cooling manner, for he was feeling more hot and anxious than ever in his life before.

‘I think,’ said Piglet, when he had licked the tip of his nose too, and found that it brought very little comfort, ‘I think that I have just remembered something. I have just remembered something that I forgot to do yesterday and shan’t be able to do to-morrow. So I suppose I really ought to go back and do it now.’

‘We’ll do it this afternoon, and I’ll come with you,’ said Pooh.

‘It isn’t the sort of thing you can do in the afternoon,’ said Piglet quickly. ‘It’s a very particular morning thing, that has to be done in the morning, and, if possible, between the hours of – What would you say the time was?’

‘About twelve,’ said Winnie-the-Pooh, looking at the sun.

‘Between, as I was saying, the hours of twelve and twelve five. So, really, dear old Pooh, if you’ll excuse me – What’s that?’

Pooh looked up at the sky, and then, as he heard the whistle again, he looked up into the branches of a big oak-tree, and then he saw a friend of his.

‘It’s Christopher Robin,’ he said.

‘Ah, then you’ll be all right,’ said Piglet. ‘You’ll be quite safe with him. Good-bye,’ and he trotted off home as quickly as he could, very glad to be Out of All Danger again.

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.’

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.

Piglet meets a Heffalump