...IN WHICH CHRISTOPHER ROBIN GIVES
A POOH PARTY, AND WE SAY GOOD-BYE
ONE day when the sun had come back over
the Forest, bringing with it the scent of may, and all the streams
of the Forest were tinkling happily to find themselves their own
pretty shape again, and the little pools lay dreaming of the life
they had seen and the big things they had done, and in the warmth
and quiet of the Forest the cuckoo was trying over his voice carefully
and listening to see if he liked it, and wood-pigeons were complaining
gently to themselves in their lazy comfortable way that it was
the other fellow's fault, but it didn't matter very much; on such
a day as this Christopher Robin whistled in a special way he had,
and Owl came flying out of the Hundred Acre Wood to see what was
wanted.
"Owl," said Christopher
Robin, "I am going to give a party."
"You are, are you?" said
Owl.
"And it's to be a special sort
of party, because it's because of what Pooh did when he did what
he did to save Piglet from the flood."
"Oh, that's what it's for,
is it?" said Owl.
"Yes, so will you tell Pooh
as quickly as you can, and all the others, because it will be
to-morrow?"
"Oh, it will, will it?"
said Owl, still being as helpful as possible.
"So will you go and tell them,
Owl?"
Owl tried to think of something
very wise to say, but couldn't, so he flew off to tell the others.
And the first person he told was Pooh.
"Pooh," he said, "Christopher
Robin is giving a party."
"Oh!" said Pooh And then
seeing that Owl expected him to say something else, he said, "Will
there be those little cake things with pink sugar icing?"
Owl felt that it was rather beneath
him to talk about little cake things with pink sugar icing, so
he told Pooh exactly what Christopher Robin had said, and flew
off to Eeyore.
"Party for Me?" thought
Pooh to himself. "How grand!" And he began to wonder
if all the other animals would know that it was a special Pooh
Party, and if Christopher Robin had told them about The Floating
Bear and the Brain of Pooh, and all the wonderful ships he had
invented and sailed on, and he began to think how awful it would
be if everybody had forgotten about it, and nobody quite knew
what the party was for; and the more he thought like this, the
more the party got muddled in his mind, like a dream when nothing
goes right.
And the dream began to sing itself
over in his head until it became a sort of song. It was an
ANXIOUS POOH SONG.
3 Cheers for Pooh (For Who?) For Pooh-- (Why what did he do?) I thought you knew; He saved his friend from
a wetting! 3 Cheers for Bear! (For where?) For Bear-- He couldn't swim, But he rescued him! (He rescued who?) Oh, listen, do! I am talking of Pooh? (Of who?) Of Pooh! (I'm sorry I keep forgetting). Well. Pooh was a Bear of
Enormous Brain-- (Just say it again!) Of enormous brain-- (Of enormous what?) Well, he ate a lot, And I don't know if he could
swim or not, But he managed to float On a sort of boat (On a sort of what?) Well, a sort of pot-- So now let's give him three
hearty cheers (So now let's give him three
hearty whitches?) And hope he'll be with us
for years and years, And grow in health and wisdom
and riches! 3 Cheers for Pooh! (For who?) For Pooh-- 3 Cheers for Bear (For where?) For Bear-- 3 Cheers for the wonderful
Winnie-the-Pooh! (Just tell me, somebody--WHAT
DID HE DO?)
While this was going on inside him,
Owl was talking to Eeyore.
"Eeyore," said Owl, "Christopher
Robin is giving a party."
"Very interesting," said
Eeyore. "I suppose they will be sending me down the odd bits
which got trodden on. Kind and Thoughtful. Not at all, don't mention
it."
"There is an Invitation for
you."
"What's that like?"
"An Invitation!"
"Yes, I heard you. Who dropped
it?"
"This isn't anything to eat,
it's asking you to the party. To-morrow."
Eeyore shook his head slowly.
"You mean Piglet. The little
fellow with the exited ears. That's Piglet. I'll tell him."
"No, no!" said Owl, getting
quite fussy. "It's you!"
"Are you sure?"
"Of course I'm sure. Christopher
Robin said 'All of them! Tell all of them.'"
"All of them, except Eeyore?"
"All of them," said Owl
sulkily.
"Ah!" said Eeyore. "A
mistake, no doubt, but still, I shall come. Only don't blame me
if it rains."
But it didn't rain. Christopher
Robin had made a long table out of some long pieces of wood, and
they all sat round it. Christopher Robin sat at one end, and Pooh
sat at the other, and between them on one side were Owl and Eeyore
and Piglet, and between them on the other side were Rabbit, and
Roo and Kanga. And all Rabbit's friends and relations spread themselves
about on the grass, and waited hopefully in case anybody spoke
to them, or dropped anything, or asked them the time.
It was the first party to which
Roo had ever been, and he was very excited. As soon as ever they
had sat down he began to talk.
"Hallo, Pooh!" he squeaked.
"Hallo, Roo!" said Pooh.
Roo jumped up and down in his seat
for a little while and then began again.
"Hallo, Piglet!" he squeaked.
Piglet waved a paw at him, being
too busy to say anything.
"Hallo, Eeyore!" said
Roo.
Eeyore nodded gloomily at him. "It
will rain soon, you see if it doesn't," he said.
Roo looked to see if it didn't,
and it didn't, so he said "Hallo, Owl!"--and Owl said
"Hallo, my little fellow," in a kindly way, and went
on telling Christopher Robin about an accident which had nearly
happened to a friend of his whom Christopher Robin didn't know,
and Kanga said to Roo, "Drink up your milk first, dear, and
talk afterwards." So Roo, who was drinking his milk, tried
to say that he could do both at once . . . and had to be patted
on the back and dried for quite a long time afterwards.
When they had all nearly eaten enough,
Christopher Robin banged on the table with his spoon, and everybody
stopped talking and was very silent, except Roo who was just finishing
a loud attack of hiccups and trying to look as if it was one of
Rabbit's relations.
"This party," said Christopher
Robin, "is a party because of what someone did, and we all
know who it was, and it's his party, because of what he did, and
I've got a present for him and here it is." Then he felt
about a little and whispered, "Where is it?"
While he was looking, Eeyore coughed
in an impressive way and began to speak.
"Friends," he said, "including
oddments, it is a great pleasure, or perhaps I had better say
it has been a pleasure so far, to see you at my party. What I
did was nothing. Any of you-except Rabbit and Owl and Kanga--would
have done the same. Oh, and Pooh. My remarks do not, of course,
apply to Piglet and Roo, because they are too small. Any of you
would have done the same. But it just happened to be Me. It was
not, I need hardly say, with an idea of getting what Christopher
Robin is looking for now"--and he put his front leg to his
mouth and said in a loud whisper, "Try under the table"--"that
I did what I did--but because I feel that we should all do what
we can to help. I feel that we should all----"
"H--hup!" said Roo accidentally.
"Roo, dear!" said Kanga
reproachfully.
"Was it me?" asked Roo,
a little surprised.
"What's Eeyore talking about?"
Piglet whispered to Pooh.
"I don't know," said Pooh
rather dolefully.
"I thought this was your party."
"I thought it was once. But
I suppose it isn't."
"I'd sooner it was yours than
Eeyore's," said Piglet.
"So would I," said Pooh.
"H--hup!" said Roo again.
"AS--I--WAS--SAYING,"
said Eeyore loudly and sternly, "as I was saying when I was
interrupted by various Loud Sounds, I feel that--"
"Here it is!" cried Christopher
Robin excitedly. "Pass it down to silly old Pooh. It's for
Pooh."
"For Pooh?" said Eeyore.
"Of course it is. The best
bear in all the world."
"I might have known,"
said Eeyore. "After all, one can't complain. I have my friends.
Somebody spoke to me only yesterday. And was it last week or the
week before that Rabbit bumped into me and said 'Bother!' The
Social Round. Always something going on."
Nobody was listening, for they were
all saying, "Open it, Pooh," "What is it, Pooh?"
"I know what it is," "No, you don't," and
other helpful remarks of this sort. And of course Pooh was opening
it as quickly as ever he could, but without cutting the string,
because you never know when a bit of string might be Useful. At
last it was undone.
When Pooh saw what it was, he nearly
fell down, he was so pleased. It was a Special Pencil Case. There
were pencils in it marked "B" for Bear, and pencils
marked "HB " for Helping Bear, and pencils marked "BB"
for Brave Bear. There was a knife for sharpening the pencils,
and indiarubber for rubbing out anything which you had spelt wrong,
and a ruler for ruling lines for the words to walk on, and inches
marked on the ruler in case you wanted to know how many inches
anything was, and Blue Pencils and Red Pencils and Green Pencils
for saying special things in blue and red and green. And all these
lovely things were in little pockets of their own in a Special
Case which shut with a click when you clicked it. And they were
all for Pooh.
"Oh!" said Pooh.
"Oh, Pooh!" said everybody
else except Eeyore.
"Thank-you," growled Pooh.
But Eeyore was saying to himself,
"This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated,
if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it."
Later on, when they had all said
"Good-bye" and "Thank-you" to Christopher
Robin, Pooh and Piglet walked home thoughtfully together in the
golden evening, and for a long time they were silent.
"When you wake up in the morning,
Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's the first thing
you say to yourself?"
"What's for breakfast?"
said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"
"I say, I wonder what's going
to happen exciting to-day?" said Piglet. Pooh nodded thoughtfully.
"It's the same thing,"
he said.
"And what did happen?"
asked Christopher Robin.
"When?"
"Next morning."
"I don't know."
"Could you think, and tell
me and Pooh some time?"
"If you wanted it very much."
"Pooh does," said Christopher
Robin.
He gave a deep sigh, picked his
bear up by the leg and walked off to the door, trailing Winnie-the-Pooh
behind him. At the door he turned and said, "Coming to see
me have my bath?"
"I might," I said.
"Was Pooh's pencil case any
better than mine?"
"It was just the same,"
I said.
He nodded and went out . . . and
in a moment I heard Winnie-the-Pooh--bump, bump, bump--going up
the stairs behind him.
