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:

“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 they went outside. And Pooh looked at the knocker and the notice below it, and he looked at the bell-rope and the notice below it, and the more he looked at the bell-rope, the more he felt that he had seen something like it, somewhere else, sometime before.

“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?”

But Owl went on and on, using longer and longer words, until at last he came back to where he started, and he explained that the person to write out this notice was Christopher Robin.

“It was he who wrote the ones on my front door for me. Did you see them, Pooh?”

For some time now Pooh had been saying “Yes” and “No” in turn, with his eyes shut, to all that Owl was saying, and having said, “Yes, yes,” last time, he said “No, not at all,” now, without really knowing what Owl was talking about.

“Didn’t you see them?” said Owl, a little surprised. “Come and look at them now.”