‘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?’

‘I just came across it in the Forest. It was hanging over a bush, and I thought at first somebody lived there, so I rang it, and nothing happened, and then I rang it again very loudly, and it came off in my hand, and as nobody seemed to want it, I took it home, and—’

‘Owl,’ said Pooh solemnly, ‘you made a mistake. Somebody did want it.’

‘Who?’

‘Eeyore. My dear friend Eeyore. He was – he was fond of it.’

‘Fond of it?’

‘Attached to it,’ said Winnie-the-Pooh sadly.

So with these words he unhooked it, and carried it back to Eeyore; and when Christopher Robin had nailed it on in its right place again, Eeyore frisked about the forest, waving his tail so happily that Winnie-the-Pooh came over all funny, and had to hurry home for a little snack

of something to sustain him. And, wiping his mouth half an hour afterwards, he sang to himself proudly:

Who found the Tail?

‘I,’ said Pooh,

‘At a quarter to two

(Only it was quarter to eleven really),

I found the Tail!’

CHAPTER FIVE

in which Piglet meets a Heffalump

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.’