The House at Pooh Corner - A. A. Milne [10]
PIGLET (modestly): “Not at all, Pooh.” (And then, when Christopher Robin comes, Pooh can tell him all about it.)
While Piglet was dreaming this happy dream, and Pooh was wondering again whether it was fourteen or fifteen, the Search for Small was still going on all over the Forest. Small’s real name was Very Small Beetle, but he was called Small for short, when he was spoken to at all, which hardly ever happened except when somebody said: “Really, Small!” He had been staying with Christopher Robin for a few seconds, and he started round a gorse-bush for exercise, but instead of coming back the other way, as expected, he hadn’t, so nobody knew where he was.
“I expect he’s just gone home,” said Christopher Robin to Rabbit.
“Did he say Good-bye-and-thank-you-for-a-nice-time?” said Rabbit.
“He’d only just said how-do-you-do,” said Christopher Robin.
“Ha!” said Rabbit. After thinking a little, he went on: “Has he written a letter saying how much he enjoyed himself, and how sorry he was he had to go so suddenly?”
Christopher Robin didn’t think he had.
“Ha!” said Rabbit again, and looked very important. “This is Serious. He is Lost. We must begin the Search at once.”
Christopher Robin, who was thinking of something else, said: “Where’s Pooh?”—but Rabbit had gone. So he went into his house and drew a picture of Pooh going a long walk at about seven o’clock in the morning, and then he climbed to the top of his tree and climbed down again, and then he wondered what Pooh was doing, and went across the Forest to see.
It was not long before he came to the Gravel Pit, and he looked down, and there were Pooh and Piglet, with their backs to him, dreaming happily.
“Ho-ho!” said Christopher Robin loudly and suddenly.
Piglet jumped six inches in the air with Surprise and Anxiety, but Pooh went on dreaming.
“It’s the Heffalump!” thought Piglet nervously. “Now, then!” He hummed in his throat a little, so that none of the words should stick, and then, in the most delightfully easy way, he said: “Tra-la-la, tra-la-la,” as if he had just thought of it. But he didn’t look round, because if you look round and see a Very Fierce Heffalump looking down at you, sometimes you forget what you were going to say. “Rum-tum-tum-tiddle-um,” said Christopher Robin in a voice like Pooh’s. Because Pooh had once invented a song which went:
Tra-la-la, tra-la-la,
Tra-la-la, tra-la-la,
Rum-tum-tum-tiddle-um
So whenever Christopher Robin sings it, he always sings it in a Pooh-voice, which seems to suit it better.
“He’s said the wrong thing,” thought Piglet anxiously. “He ought to have said, ‘Ho-ho!’ again. Perhaps I had better say it for him.” And, as fiercely as he could, Piglet said: “Ho-ho!”
“How did you get there, Piglet?” said Christopher Robin in his ordinary voice.
“This is Terrible,” thought Piglet. “First he talks in Pooh’s voice, and then he talks in Christopher Robin’s voice, and he’s doing it so as to Unsettle me.” And being now Completely Unsettled, he said very quickly and squeakily: “This is a trap for Poohs, and I’m waiting to fall in it, ho-ho, what’s all this, and then I say ho-ho again.”
“What?” said Christopher Robin.
“A trap for ho-ho’s,” said Piglet huskily. “I’ve just made it, and I’m waiting for the ho-ho to come-come.”
How long Piglet would have gone on like this I don’t know, but at that moment Pooh woke up suddenly and decided that it was sixteen. So he got up; and as he turned his head so as to soothe himself in that awkward place in the middle of the back where something was tickling him, he saw Christopher Robin.
“Hallo!” he shouted joyfully.
“Hallo, Pooh.”
Piglet looked up, and looked away again. And he felt so Foolish and Uncomfortable that he had almost decided to run away to Sea and be a Sailor, when suddenly he saw something.
“Pooh!” he cried. “There’s something climbing up your back.”
“I thought there was,” said Pooh.
“It’s Small!” cried Piglet.
“Oh, that’s who it is, is it?” said Pooh.
“Christopher Robin, I’ve