Pooh, who had gone into a happy dream, woke up with a start, and said that Honey was a much more trappy thing than Haycorns. Piglet didn’t think so; and they were just going to argue about it, when Piglet remembered that, if they put acorns in the Trap,
‘Honey,’ said Piglet to himself in a thoughtful way, as if it were now settled. ‘
‘Very well,’ said Pooh, and he stumped off.
As soon as he got home, he went to the larder; and he stood on a chair, and took down a very large jar of honey from the top shelf. It had HUNNY written on it, but, just to make sure, he took off the paper cover and looked at it, and it
Having made certain of this, he took the jar back to Piglet, and Piglet looked up from the bottom of his Very Deep Pit, and said, ‘Got it?’ and Pooh said, ‘Yes, but it isn’t quite a full jar,’ and he threw it down to Piglet, and Piglet said, ‘No, it isn’t! Is that all you’ve got left?’ and Pooh said, ‘Yes.’ Because it was. So Piglet put the jar at the bottom of the Pit, and climbed out, and they went off home together.
‘Well, good night, Pooh,’ said Piglet, when they had got to Pooh’s house. ‘And we meet at six o’clock to-morrow morning by the Pine Trees, and see how many Heffalumps we’ve got in our Trap.’
‘Six o’clock, Piglet. And have you got any string?’
‘No. Why do you want string?’
‘To lead them home with.’
‘Oh! … I
‘Some do and some don’t. You never can tell with Heffalumps. Well, good night!’
‘Good night!’
And off Piglet trotted to his house TRESPASSERS W, while Pooh made his preparations for bed.
Some hours later, just as the night was beginning to steal away, Pooh woke up suddenly with a sinking feeling. He had had that sinking feeling before, and he knew what it meant.
‘That’s funny,’ he thought. ‘I know I had a jar of honey there. A full jar, full of honey right up to the top, and it had HUNNY written on it, so that I should know it was honey. That’s very funny.’ And then he began to wander up and down, wondering where it was and murmuring a murmur to himself. Like this:
It’s very, very funny
’Cos I
’Cos it had a label on,
Saying HUNNY.
A goloptious full-up pot too,
And I don’t know where it’s got to,
No, I don’t know where it’s gone –
Well, it’s funny.
He had murmured this to himself three times in a singing sort of way, when suddenly he remembered. He had put it into the Cunning Trap to catch the Heffalump.
‘Bother!’ said Pooh. ‘It all comes of trying to be kind to Heffalumps.’ And he got back into bed.
But he couldn’t sleep. The more he tried to sleep, the more he couldn’t. He tried Counting Sheep, which is sometimes a good way of getting to sleep, and, as that was no good, he tried counting Heffalumps. And that was worse. Because every Heffalump that he counted was making straight for a pot of Pooh’s honey,
The Sun was still in bed, but there was a lightness in the sky over the Hundred Acre Wood which seemed to show that it was waking up and would soon be kicking off the clothes. In the half-light the Pine Trees looked cold and lonely, and the Very Deep Pit seemed deeper than it was, and Pooh’s jar of honey at the bottom was something mysterious, a shape and no more. But as he got nearer to it his nose told him that it was indeed honey, and his tongue came out and began to polish up his mouth, ready for it.
‘Bother!’ said Pooh, as he got his nose inside the jar. ‘A Heffalump has been eating it!’ And then he thought a little and said, ‘Oh, no,
Indeed, he had eaten most of it. But there was a little left at the very bottom of the jar, and he pushed his head right in, and began to lick. …