be comforting afterwards in the evenings to look back on the day when he answered a Heffalump back as bravely as if the Heffalump wasn’t there. It seemed so easy now. He knew just what he would say:
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 Goodbye-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 on 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