Alan Alexander Milne

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

But Owl went on and on, using longer and longer words, until at last he came back to where he started, and he explained that the person to write out this notice was Christopher Robin.

‘It was he who wrote the ones on my front door for me. Did you see them, Pooh?’

For some time now Pooh had been saying ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ in turn, with his eyes shut, to all that Owl was saying, and having said, ‘Yes, yes,’ last time, he said, ‘No, not at all,’ now, without really knowing what Owl was talking about.

‘Didn’t you see them?’ said Owl, a little surprised. ‘Come and look at them now.’

So they went outside. And Pooh looked at the knocker and the notice below it, and he looked at the bell-rope and the notice below it, and the more he looked at the bell-rope, the more he felt that he had seen something like it, somewhere else, sometime before.

‘Handsome bell-rope, isn’t it?’ said Owl.

Pooh nodded.

‘It reminds me of something,’ he said, ‘but I can’t think what. Where did you get it?’

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.