The House at Pooh Corner - A. A. Milne [15]
“Ow!” he shouted as the tree flew past him.
“Look out!” cried Christopher Robin to the others.
There was a crash, and a tearing noise, and a confused heap of everybody on the ground.
Christopher Robin and Pooh and Piglet picked themselves up first, and then they picked Tigger up, and underneath everybody else was Eeyore.
“Oh, Eeyore!” cried Christopher Robin. “Are you hurt?” And he felt him rather anxiously, and dusted him and helped him to stand up again.
Eeyore said nothing for a long time. And then he said: “Is Tigger there?”
Tigger was there, feeling Bouncy again already.
“Yes,” said Christopher Robin. “Tigger’s here.”
“Well, just thank him for me,” said Eeyore.
Chapter Five
IN WHICH
Rabbit Has a Busy Day, and We Learn What Christopher Robin Does in the Mornings
IT WAS GOING to be one of Rabbit’s busy days. As soon as he woke up he felt important, as if everything depended upon him. It was just the day for Organizing Something, or for Writing a Notice Signed Rabbit, or for Seeing What Everybody Else Thought About It. It was a perfect morning for hurrying round to Pooh, and saying, “Very well, then, I’ll tell Piglet,” and then going to Piglet, and saying, “Pooh thinks—but perhaps I’d better see Owl first.” It was a Captainish sort of day, when everybody said, “Yes, Rabbit” and “No, Rabbit” and waited until he had told them.
He came out of his house and sniffed the warm spring morning as he wondered what he would do. Kanga’s house was nearest, and at Kanga’s house was Roo, who said “Yes, Rabbit” and “No, Rabbit” almost better than anybody else in the Forest; but there was another animal there nowadays, the strange and Bouncy Tigger; and he was the sort of Tigger who was always in front when you were showing him the way anywhere, and was generally out of sight when at last you came to the place and said proudly “Here we are!”
“No, not Kanga’s,” said Rabbit thoughtfully to himself, as he curled his whiskers in the sun; and, to make quite sure that he wasn’t going there, he turned to the left and trotted off in the other direction, which was the way to Christopher Robin’s house.
“After all,” said Rabbit to himself, “Christopher Robin depends on Me. He’s fond of Pooh and Piglet and Eeyore, and so am I, but they haven’t any Brain. Not to notice. And he respects Owl, because you can’t help respecting anybody who can spell TUESDAY, even if he doesn’t spell it right; but spelling isn’t everything. There are days when spelling Tuesday simply doesn’t count. And Kanga is too busy looking after Roo, and Roo is too young and Tigger is too bouncy to be any help, so there’s really nobody but Me, when you come to look at it. I’ll go and see if there’s anything he wants doing, and then I’ll do it for him. It’s just the day for doing things.”
He trotted along happily, and by-and-by he crossed the stream and came to the place where his friends-and-relations lived. There seemed to be even more of them about than usual this morning, and having nodded to a hedgehog or two, with whom he was too busy to shake hands, and having said, “Good morning, good morning,” importantly to some of the others, and “Ah, there you are,” kindly, to the smaller ones, he waved a paw at them over his shoulder, and was gone; leaving such an air of excitement and I-don’t-know-what behind him, that several members of the Beetle family, including Henry Rush, made their way at once to the Hundred Acre Wood and began climbing trees, in the hope of getting to the top before it happened, whatever it was, so that they might see it properly.
Rabbit hurried on by the edge of the Hundred Acre Wood, feeling more important every minute, and soon he came to the tree where Christopher Robin lived. He knocked at the door, and he called out once or twice, and then he walked back a little way and put his paw up to keep the sun out, and called to the top of the tree, and then he turned all round and shouted “Hallo!” and “I say!” “It’s Rabbit!”—but nothing happened. Then he stopped and listened, and