Alan Alexander Miln. The house at Pooh Corner -
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"Well, it's when people call out at you just as you're
going off to do it 'What are you going to do, Christopher
Robin?' and you say 'Oh, nothing,' and then you go and do it."
"Oh, I see," said Pooh.
"This is a nothing sort of thing that we're doing now."
"Oh, I see," said Pooh again.
"It means just going along, listening to all the things
you can't hear, and not bothering."
"Oh!" said Pooh.
They walked on, thinking of This and That, and
by-and-by they came to an enchanted place on the very top of
the Forest called Galleons Lap, which is sixty-something trees
in a circle; and Christopher Robin knew that it was enchanted
because nobody had ever been able to count whether it was
sixty-three or sixty-four, not even when he tied a piece of
string round each tree after he had counted it. Being
enchanted, its floor was not like the floor the Forest, gorse
and bracken and heather, but close-set grass, quiet and smooth
and green. It was the only place in the Forest where you could
sit down carelessly, without getting up again almost at once
and looking for some where else. Sitting there they could see
the whole world spread out until it reached the sky, and
whatever there was all the world over was with them in Galleons
Lap.
Suddenly Christopher Robin began to tell Pooh about
some of the things: People called Kings and Queens and
something called Factors, and a place called Europe, and an
island in the middle of the sea where no ships came, and how
you make a Suction Pump (if you want to), and when Knights were
Knighted, and what comes from Brazil. And Pooh, his back
against one of the sixty-something trees and his paws folded in
front of him, said "Oh!" and "I didn't know," and thought how
