POOH CORNER

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 77, Issue 6566, 15 September 1948, Page 10

POOH CORNER

Dear Children, We have something very special at Pooh Corner just now. Near our back door we have a tree and low down where we can see quite well a blackbird has built her nest. She has three browny blue*eggs and she sits there so patiently waiting for the wonderful day when the helpless baby birds ■ come peeping through the shells. We I are waiting almost as eagerly as the I two little parent birds and we hope they are safe and happy till the time i comes for them to fly away. Spring is I a wonderful time and everything is looking so fresh and clean and new i in the* sunshine. Isn’t it a lovely time ■ to be alive—l always feel like going : out and walking in the glory of re--1 awakening. We all send you our love. —Winnie-the-Pooh, MERIT CORNER (3rd Series—lsth September) Valerie Lamont, D.M.W., Te Kawa. Margaret Rollett, Puahue. | Dear Winnie-the-Pooh, First of all I want to thank you and Piglet for your loving kindness in sending me these lovely flowers. It was a lovely surprise. 1 also got a I lovely gold and silver bracelet from my great gland mother in Ireland—'just what I’ve always wanted. With ■ all the lovely flowers, fruit and visit- ! ors, and very nice nurses, it is worth spending my holidays in bed, I although 1 never intended to be i rushed into hospital on a very wet ! night. I think Dad got a fright but (as I am having- my stitches out on i Monday I will soon be home. Grandad i and Grandma are down here to see ' me. Elaine and Johnny have a lamb •each. Muni says John took his to bed ■ the first night, but now he won’t even I feed it. Outside my window is a lovely i tree with red berries on it. We can I also see the race-course. 1 have very | nice ladies in my room. One lady ! lives very near’our home. Her husI band passes our place every night to i come in here. I have a lot of letters [for Mum to post for me. I will close, i now, hoping you arc as cosy as Ij Lots of love to Piglet and yourself.— I Your loving member, Hokey Pokey. : D.M.W.

I I’m so glad you liked the flowers, Hokey Pokey. We thought you might. i The bracelet sounds very pretty. I [ think you are a very lucky girl, j Wouldn’t it be fun to go to Ireland ■ and see your great grandmother ? I I think you are quite enjoying being- ! sick, and I’m sure with such nice j nurses you are having a good time in j hospital. The lambs are rather darI lings aren’t they—you will have to ; take over John’s when you get home. I It is much better to be in a room with 'others—it isn’t nearly so lonely is it? • Writing- letters when you are in bed is a good way of catching up on every- • one I think. I Dear Winnie-the-Pooh.

i The last time I wrote 1 was at my j Grandmother’s wasn’t I? I am here I again for a short holiday. We were [going- to go to Kawhia for a while i but we changed our minds. Nearly j three years ago I sent a food parcel 1 over to England. I put a note in ask- [ ing if the person who got the parcej I would be my pen-friend. Just a few > weeks ago I received a letter from a | girl who got my parcel. She took a I long time to write didn’t she? I am sorry I have not written before, but • 1 am one of the people who do not i like writing letters very much. Howi ever, 1 will try to write more often. We went over to Hamilton last Mon- ’ day. My brother had never ,been on a 'train before and he enjoyed his trip I very much. We had a good time inHamilton and saw the wreckage at • Frankton. People were scraping ; around in huge heaps' of timber and iron, but ( they all looked very cheerIful. Just now I am crazy on knitting. First I knitted a jumper for myself, just now I am knitting a sleeveless ; pullover for my brother, and when I ; have finished that I am going to knit - myself a cardigan. 1 like to have a ' book and read while 1 knit. Did you I have the ’flu? All our family did. and jwe all felt very miserable while it j lasted, but we are all better now. I : missed all my exams at school, but I I was not the only one as lots of others missed some of theirs too. I must go - now. Goodbye.—Love, from Red Rose Bud.

I think you were with your Grandj mother when' you wrote. Red Rose i Bud. It is almost as nice staying 'there as being at Kawhia I expect. It • certainly is a long while after to re-

| ceive a letter from your pen-friend. ! I expect she intended to write all the time but unlike most of us, finally I did it. 1 often mean to do these things but keep putting it off till 1 think it is too late. I would like to hnve seen the tornado damage—it ' must have been very dreadful. You are a very clover girl to be abb? to ' read and knit at the same time—kniti ting looks hard enough when you I watch it all the time. Yes, 1 have had : the ’flu, and I was very sick too. The exams were very interrupted by it.

key turned in the lock, watched him eagerly from the window til! he disappeared down the carriage-drive. Then, laughing heartily, he dressed as quickly as possible in the smartest suit he could lay hands on at the moment, filled his pockets with cash which he took from the small drawer in the dressing-table, and next, knotting the sheets from his bed together and tying one end of the improvised rope round the central mullion of the Tudor window which formed such a feature of his bedroom, he scrambled out, slid lightly .to the ground, and, taking the opposite direction to the* Rat, marched off light-heartedly, whistling a merry tune.. It was a gloomy luncheon for Rat when the Badger and the Mole at length returned, and he had to face the mat table with his pitiful and unconvincing story. The Badger’s caustic, not to say brutal, remarks may be imagined, and therefore passed over; but it was painful to the Rat that even the Mole, though ho took his friend’s’ side as far as possible, could not help saying, “You’ve been a bit of a duffer this time, Ratty! Toad, too, of all animals!”

“He did it awfully well,” said the crestfallen Rat.

“He did you awfully well!” rejoined the Badger hotly. ’‘However, talking won’t mend matters. He’s got clear away for the time, that’s certain; and the worst of it is, he’ll be so conceited with what he’ll think is his cleverness that he may commit any folly. One comfort is, we’re free now, and needn’t waste any more of our precious time doing sentry-go. But we’d better continue to sleep at Toad Hall for a while longer. Toad may be brought back at any moment—on a stretcher, or between two policemen.” So spoke the Badger, not knowing what the future held in store, or how much water, and of how turbid a character, was to run under bridges before Toad should sit at ease again in his ancestral Hall.

Meanwhile, Toad, gay and irresponsible, was walking briskly along the high road, some miles from home. At first he had taken by-paths, and crossed many fields and changed his course several times, in case of pursuit; but now, feeling by this time safe from recapture, and the sun smiling brightly upon him, and all Nature joining in a chorus of approval to the song of self-praise that his own heart was singing to him, he almost danced along the road in his satisfaction and conceit. “Smart piece of work that!” he remarked to himself, chuckling. “Brain against brute force—and brain came out on the top—as it’s bound to. Poor old Ratty! My! won’t he catch it when the Badger gets back! A worthy fellow, Ratty, with many good qualities, but very little intelligence and absolutely no education. I must take him in hand some day, and see if I can make something of him.” Filled full of conceited thoughts such as these he strode along, his head in the air, till he reached a little town, where the sign of “The Red Lion,” swinging across the road halfway down the main street, reminded him that he had not breakfasted that day, and that he was exceedingly hungry after his long wai'.. He marched into the inn, ordered the best luncheon that could be provided at so short a notice, and sat down to eat it in the coffee-room.

He was about half-way through his meal when an only too familiar sound, approaching down the street, made him start and fall a-trembling all over. The poop-poop! drew nearer and nearer, the car could be heard to turn into the inn-yard and come to a stop, and Toad' had to holcl on to the leg of the table to conceal his overmastering emotion. Presently the party entered the coffee-room, hungry, talkative, and gay, voluble on their experiences of the morning and the merits of the chariot that had brought them along so well. Toad listened eagerly, all ears, for a time; at last he could stand it no longer. He slipped out of the room quietly, paid his bill at the bar, and as soon as he got outside sauntered round quietly to the inn-yard. “There cannot be any harm,” he said to himself, “in my just looking at it!” The car stood in the middle of the yard, quite unattended, the stablehelps and other hangers-on being all at their dinner. Toad walked slowly round l it, inspecting, criticising, musing deeply.

! “I wonder,” he said to himself presently, “I wonder if this sort of ear starts easily?” Next moment, hardly knowing how it came about, he found he had hold of the handle and was turning it. As the familiar sound broke forth, the old passion seized on Toad and completely mastered him, body and soul. As if in a dream he found himself, somehow, seated in the driver’s seat; as if in a dream, he pulled the lever and swung the car round the yard and out through the archway; and, as if in a dream, all sense of right and wrong, all fea,r of qbvious consequences, seemed temporarily suspened. He increased his pace, and as the car devoured the street and leapt forth on the high road through the open country, he was only conscious that he was Toad once more, Toad at j his best and highest, Toad the terrdr, J the traffic-queller, the Lord of the lone trail, before whom all must give way-or be smitten into nothingness and everlasting night. He chanted as he flew, and the car responded with sonorous drone; the miles were eaten ; up under him as he sped he knew not j whither, fulfilling his instincts, livi ing his hour, reckless of what might come to him.

j “I’m afraid it is the trouble you i mind, though,” replied the Toad lang- | uidly. “I can quite understand it. It’s [ natural enough. You’re tired of bothI ering about me. I mustn’t ask you to ! do anything further. I’m a nuisance, | I know.” i “You are, indeed,” said the Rat. “But I tell you I’d take any trouble on earth for you, if only you’d be a ! sensible animal.” ; “If I thought that, Ratty,” murmured Toad, more feebly than ever, , “then I would beg you—for the last i time, probably—to step round to the village as quickly as possible—even now it may be too late—and fetch the doctor. But don’t you bother. It’s only j a trouble, and perhaps we may as 1 well let things take their course.”

(To b* Continued)