“I did,” said Christopher Robin, “but then something would happen and I would forget. It’s noisy at school. Everyone shouts.”

“It’s very noisy in the Forest too,” said Pooh.

“Yes, but here the noises come one at a time, and at school they all come together.”

Pooh seemed to be a little disappointed with Christopher Robin’s answer.

“If you don’t miss us, nobody will.”

“Silly old Bear,” said Christopher Robin. “I might not have missed you all the time, but I never forgot you.”

Pooh nodded slowly. Then he brightened, and suggested: “Maybe we should have a school here, and you could be the headmaster.”

“What a good idea,” said Christopher Robin. “Only I’m not old enough to be a headmaster, and I haven’t got a gown.” Then he thought for a moment, and added, “But I wonder...”

Meanwhile, over in the place that had been boggy before it turned dry and crusty, Lottie was swimming around in her old tin trunk, Fortitude Hall, and explaining to Eeyore what was wrong with the Forest.

“Perhaps, since you have been here such a very long time, Eeyore, you don’t notice things as clearly as I do. But it seems to me that the behaviour of some of the animals is Quite Uncouth.”

“Especially the stripy ones,” agreed Eeyore.

“Exactly. Stripes or spots, fur or feathers, what they need is a little discipline. So I have a Proposition to put to you.”

“Well, let me get comfortable first,” said Eeyore, scratching that place behind his right ear where a scratch was always welcome.

At exactly this moment, Christopher Robin and Pooh came into view.

Christopher Robin was riding his bicycle, and Pooh was perched on the crossbar. At least, some of the time he was. Christopher Robin could not see the grass in front of him, because Pooh was in the way. So every time they went over a tussock, the bear was bumped into the air and tumbled onto the ground.

“I’m not sure that bicycles were meant for bears, or bears for bicycles,” said Pooh, getting down carefully as Christopher Robin stopped beside Lottie’s trunk. Pooh rubbed that part of him which was meant for landing on, but which had been landed on rather too much.

Christopher Robin gave him a consoling pat.

“Why don’t you tell them about our proposal,” he suggested.

“We have a proposal too!”said Lottie. “Shall we go first?”

“I think we should go at the same time,” said Christopher Robin. “One, two, three—” “What the Forest needs is a school,” said Lottie, and at the same time Pooh said: “We were thinking of a school in the Forest.”

“How strange,” said Eeyore. “There seems to be a sort of echo around here.”

The four of them went and sat in a magic ring of mushrooms, which is the best place in a Forest to have ideas, and sure enough their plans came thick and fast. Owl was the obvious choice to teach Latin and Greek, Rabbit would be asked to take Household Management, and Kanga, Geography.

“What will you teach, Lottie?” asked Christopher Robin.

“I shall teach Good Manners, Dancing and Deportment, Elocution and Water Sports. Diverse subjects, but I am skilled in them all.”

“I shall take sports,” said Christopher Robin, “and throwing the cricket ball. But we’ll need a headmaster. I thought that maybe—”

At just the same time Lottie lowered her voice and said a little huskily: “I thought maybe you, Eeyore...”

There was a long pause. Eeyore shuffled his feet.

“Could you mean me, Lottie? Eeyore, the old grey donkey, headmaster of a school?”

“Yes!” said Lottie, Pooh, and Christopher Robin together.

It was so quiet in the Forest you could almost hear the spiders knitting their cobwebs.

At length Eeyore said, “I shall need a gown, a mortarboard, and a blackboard. And plenty of chalk. It often breaks, you know.”

“Excellent,” said the otter. “You shall be headmaster of —yes, let us call it the Hundred Acre Wood Academy!”

So that was settled, and Lottie went to carry the news to the others.

When she asked Owl to teach Latin, he stretched his wingsacoupleoftimes,thenintoned:“Theverb amare, which means ‘to love,’ is declined: amo, amare, amavi, amatum.”

“Just what I had in mind,” said Lottie, and she hurried outside, where Tigger and Roo could be heard beginning an energetic game. Tigger tried to bounce out of her way, but Lottie was too fast for him, and before he knew it he had agreed to be a pupil.

“As long as Roo comes too!” he added belatedly.

Roo looked uncertain and said he would be a pupil as long as Piglet came too, and wouldn’t Lottie like to ask Piglet first? Unfortunately for Roo, Piglet happened to stroll by at that very moment and, when he was asked, said,

“I’ll come! I do want to know things, Roo, because there are so many things I don’t know—more than a hundred!”

“Oh,” said Roo. “Well, I know seven times four, and the capital of Spain, but I’m not telling you.”

On the first day of term, the four pupils of the Hundred Acre Wood Academy presented themselves right in the middle of the Hundred Acre Wood, where Eeyore was standing in front of a blackboard. He was wearing a mortarboard and a fine old gown with a scarlet hood and held a new piece of yellow chalk in one hoof and one of those things for rubbing out chalk in another. He welcomed the pupils by reading the register (which didn’t take long), then handed it solemnly to Pooh, who had been recruited as Prefect and given an armband that Kanga had made especially for him. It said PERFECT on it, and Pooh was so busy admiring it that he dropped the register.

Eeyore rolled his eyes, cleared his throat, and wrapped his gown closer around him. A couple of moths flew out.

“I am your headmaster,” he announced. “Now, do you all have your schoolbooks and pencils? Yes? Then I shall write on the board the school motto, and you are to copy it onto page one of your schoolbooks. The motto is—” The chalk scratched and squeaked as Eeyore wrote the word FLOREAT. “Owl, our Classics Master, will translate for us.”

Owl had not expected this, but said in a deep voice: “Floreat. Do not leave your hat on the floor.”

“We haven’t got hats,” said Tigger.

“There isn’t a floor,” said Piglet.

“I want a hat. Can I have a hat? Can it have ribbons on it?” cried Roo, getting more and more excited.

“Settle down everybody,” said Pooh the Perfect. “It’s time for assembly.”

“We’re assembled already,” Piglet pointed out.

“Then pay attention!” said Eeyore severely. “Now, in a lifetime in the Hundred Acre Wood, I have learned a few tips which I shall pass on to you. One: do not expect thistles always to be crisp and juicy. Sometimes they are crisp, and sometimes they are—”

At this point there was an audible Tiggerish whisper, “They are hot, hot, hot!”

“—juicy,” finished Eeyore, ignoring Tigger magnificently.

“Two: if there is a boggy patch and you have clean feet you will step into the boggy patch, as sure as eggs is eggs, or my name isn’t Eeyore. Three—” Eeyore seemed unsure for a moment. “Three: eggs is eggs. And four: my name certainly is Eeyore, and don’t you forget it. Now, off with the lot of you to class.”

And so the schooling began. The first lesson was Household Management, where Rabbit tried to explain a list of Things That Should Be Folded (napkins, tablecloths, sheets) as against Things That Really Should Not (hard-boiled eggs, cobwebs, desks).

Then they were all treated to Owl’s Latin class, where he declined amo, amas, amat for them several times, and told them that mus is the Latin for “mouse,” but became rather short-tempered when Pooh asked whether hus was the Latin for “house”and Piglet wanted to know if puss was the Latin for “cat.”⁷¹

Things were little better in Geography, where Kanga tried to explain that the Equator was an Imaginary Line that Ran All Around the World.

Piglet put his paw in the air.

“Please, Kanga, if the line is imaginary, how do we know it’s there?” he asked.

“Roo dear, don’t put your pencil up your nose,” said Kanga. “Now, Piglet, that’s just it. We don’t know the line is there.”

“In that case,” said Tigger, “why mention it?”

“Because if I didn’t mention it, you wouldn’t know about it!” responded Kanga rather briskly.

Roo said, “But you don’t know about it either.”

Kanga could be seen counting to ten under her breath.

“Of course I do, I’m your mother,” she informed Roo. “Now, children, it’s time for break!”

While the pupils were having their break, the teachers met to discuss why there wasn’t any discipline.

“It’s the stripy ones,” said Eeyore gloomily, shaking another moth out of his gown, which he had taken off because of the heat.

“It’s all of them,” said Rabbit, twitching his nose. “Really, I thought Roo would have been better brought up!”

Kanga gave him a warning look. “And what do you mean by that, Rabbit?”

Owl cleared his throat.

“The gravity of the situation means, suggests, connotes, imports, and portends—” he paused for a moment, looking rather as if he had forgotten what he was saying. “It means we need Christopher Robin!” he concluded, recovering splendidly.

But Lottie was having none of that.

“Nonsense!” she snorted. “He’s not due until after lunch. I can deal with this.”

After the break, Lottie taught Dancing and Deportment.

“I hear that you have not been living up to the high standards of the Academy,” she told the pupils as they stood in line in front of her.

“Sorry, Lottie,” they chorused together, with the exception of Tigger, who was trying to see if he could stick his tail into his ear.

“Pooh, as Prefect it is your duty to assist the teachers in Keeping Order,” the otter continued.

“Yes, Lottie,” agreed Pooh, trying to sound as clever as he could, and wondering if Keeping Order could mean putting your honey-pots in a very neat row and then staying at home to guard them.

“I am here to teach you good manners and grace,” said Lottie. “And we shall begin with the polka, a lively yet refined dance. Imagine, if you will, a grand ballroom filled with the crowned heads of Europe: dashing men in uniform and beautiful women in flowing silks.”

Here she placed a record carefully onto the gramophone, which she had borrowed from Christopher Robin.

“Are you all partnered? Piglet and Tigger, Pooh and Roo? Now, follow my lead—in time with the music! One, two, three, hop!—that’s it—one, two, three, hop!—no, Tigger, hop, not bounce—no, Tigger, no, no, NO!”

But it was too late. Tigger, holding Piglet in his paws, had bounced high up into the air. And when they came down again, it was on top of Lottie.

“You’re squishing me!” squeaked Piglet from in between Tigger and Lottie.

“One, two, three, hop,” continued Pooh as he polkaed past the pile, deep in concentration, not noticing that he had trodden on Roo’s feet three times and Tigger’s twice.

“Desist!” shouted Lottie as her head appeared from underneath Tigger’s tummy. With a twist of her powerful tail, she managed to extricate herself from the heap. She drew herself up to her full height in front of Pooh.

Pooh stopped short.

“Do you want me to—what was it—insist?” he asked nervously.

“Lunch!” Lottie cried. “Lunch, everybody!”

Pooh kept the pupils busy with sandwiches and the school song until the games master himself arrived.

At once, the staff of the Hundred Acre Wood Academy told him of their difficulties.

Christopher Robin listened gravely, and did not laugh, though perhaps the corner of his mouth twitched a little, once or twice.

“Well, Tigger always was more of an outdoor type,” was all he said.

After lunch, Christopher Robin took charge of the sports. First, he organized a High Jump. Piglet ran up to the bar ... and then ran under it. The High Jump was easily won by Tigger, who jumped not only over the bar but the posts as well.

“Well done, Tigger!” cried everybody, except Eeyore, who remarked, “It looked more like a bounce to me.”

Then it was time for the Long Jump. Piglet ran up to the sandpit, but instead of jumping made a fine sandcastle with a bucket that he had found lying about, the way buckets do. The Long Jump was won by Roo, who jumped right to the far end of the sandpit and beyond.

“Well jumped, Roo!” cried Kanga.

And after all that, when the animals were flushed and panting, Christopher Robin sat them all down, the pupils on one side and the teachers on the other, and asked them how they had likedschool.

There was a very long pause, and then everyone talked at once.

“An interesting experiment,” suggested Owl.

“Amo, a mouse, a mat, what kind of a language is that?” asked Piglet.

“All that folding and polishing,” grumbled Tigger. “Boring!”

“Dancing might be all right if Pooh looked where he’s going,” squeaked Roo.

“Why does a school have to have pupils anyway?” asked Lottie.

There was another pause.

“By the way, I can’t teach at all next week,” said Kanga. “It’s my spring cleaning, you know.”

“Mine too,” said Rabbit.

“That’s a shame,” said Christopher Robin. “What about everyone else?”

But suddenly it seemed that nobody at all was available anymore. Nor did anyone seem to mind.

“Oh?” prompted Christopher Robin, buttering toast.

“It didn’t seem the right sort of thing to do on a sunny day. But ... but ...” He wanted to add something about being a Perfect, and not being one any longer and how school had been...well...

“I feel the same way myself sometimes,” said Christopher Robin carelessly. “By the way, though, the thing about being a Prefect is, you don’t stop being one when you’re not at school.”

“You don’t?” said Pooh, so interested that the pawful of honey stopped halfway to his mouth.

“So I was going to mention that you ought really to go on wearing your armband, at least on special occasions. Sort of like soldiers and medals.”

So Winnie-the-Pooh did just that. And he was not the only one. If you visited Eeyore when he wasn’t expecting you, you would sometimes find him in his gown and mortarboard, using the tassle to keep flies away, and the blackboard to practice his tap dancing.

And as for Lottie, she could not keep her mind on anything for very long, and when Piglet asked her a week or so later about the Academy, she answered: “Academy, darling? What do you mean?”

Otters are like that.