One day, Pooh was walking along on a mission to find the lost tail of his friend Eeyore…
It was a fine spring morning in the forest as he started out. Little soft clouds played happily in a blue sky, skipping from time to time in front of the sun as if they had come to put it out, and then sliding away suddenly so that the next might have his turn. Through them and between them the sun shone bravely; and a copse which had worn its firs all the year round seemed old and dowdy now beside the new green lace which the beeches had put on so prettily. Through copse and spinney marched Bear; down open slopes of gorse and heather, over rocky beds of streams, up steep banks of sandstone into the heather again; and so at last, tired and hungry, to the Hundred Acre Wood. For it was in the Hundred Acre Wood that Owl lived.
“And if anyone knows anything about anything,” said Bear to himself, “it’s Owl who knows something about something,” he said, “or my name’s not Winnie-the-Pooh,” he said. “Which it is,” he added. “So there you are.”
Owl lived at The Chestnuts, an old-world residence of great charm, which was grander than anybody else’s, or seemed so to Bear, because it had both a knocker and a bell-pull. Underneath the knocker there was a notice which said:
PLES RING IF AN RNSER IS REQIRD.
Underneath the bell-pull there was a notice which said:
PLEZ CNOKE IF AN RNSR IS NOT REQID.
These notices had been written by Christopher Robin, who was the only one in the forest who could spell; for Owl, wise though he was in many ways, able to read and write and spell his own name WOL, yet somehow went all to pieces over delicate words like MEASLES and BUTTEREDTOAST.
Winnie-the-Pooh read the two notices very carefully, first from left to right, and afterwards, in case he had missed some of it, from right to left. Then, to make quite sure, he knocked and pulled the knocker, and he pulled and knocked the bell-rope, and he called out in a very loud voice, “Owl! I require an answer! It’s Bear speaking.” And the door opened, and Owl looked out.
“Hallo, Pooh,” he said. “How’s things?”
“Terrible and Sad,” said Pooh, “because Eeyore, who is a friend of mine, has lost his tail. And he’s Moping about it. So could you very kindly tell me how to find it for him?”
“Well,” said Owl, “the customary procedure in such cases is as follows.”
“What does Crustimoney Proseedcake mean?” said Pooh. “For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words Bother me.”
“It means the Thing to Do.”
“As long as it means that, I don’t mind,” said Pooh humbly.
“The thing to do is as follows. First, Issue a Reward. Then——”
“Just a moment,” said Pooh, holding up his paw. “What do we do to this—what you were saying? You sneezed just as you were going to tell me.”
“I didn’t sneeze.”
“Yes, you did, Owl.”
“Excuse me, Pooh, I didn’t. You can’t sneeze without knowing it.”
“Well, you can’t know it without something having been sneezed.”
“What I said was, ‘First Issue a Reward’.”
“You’re doing it again,” said Pooh sadly.
“A Reward!” said Owl very loudly. “We write a notice to say that we will give a large something to anybody who finds Eeyore’s tail.”
“I see, I see,” said Pooh, nodding his head.
Of course, Pooh gets distracted by the grumblings in his belly, while Owl goes “on and on, using longer and longer words.” But this does not prevent the simple bear, standing again outside Owl’s house, from finally noticing what the wordy Owl misses.
“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!”
Read the whole little story here; I haven’t excluded much.