The House at Pooh Corner. A. A. Milne

Robin, and explained what had been happening.

      ‘Don’t you know what Tiggers like?’ asked Pooh.

      ‘I expect if I thought very hard I should,’ said Christopher Robin, ‘but I thought Tigger knew.’

      ‘I do,’ said Tigger. ‘Everything there is in the world except honey and haycorns and – what were those hot things called?’

      ‘Thistles.’

      ‘Yes, and those.’

      ‘Oh, well then, Kanga can give you some breakfast.’

      So they went into Kanga’s house, and when Roo had said, ‘Hallo, Pooh,’ and ‘Hallo, Piglet’ once, and ‘Hallo, Tigger’ twice, because he had never said it before and it sounded funny, they told Kanga what they wanted, and Kanga said very kindly, ‘Well, look in my cupboard, Tigger dear, and see what you’d like.’ Because she knew at once that, however big Tigger seemed to be, he wanted as much kindness as Roo.

      ‘Shall I look, too?’ said Pooh, who was beginning to feel a little eleven o’clockish. And he found a small tin of condensed milk, and something seemed to tell him that Tiggers didn’t like this, so he took it into a corner by itself, and went with it to see that nobody interrupted it.

      But the more Tigger put his nose into this and his paw into that, the more things he found which Tiggers didn’t like. And when he had found everything in the cupboard, and couldn’t eat any of it, he said to Kanga, ‘What happens now?’

      But Kanga and Christopher Robin and Piglet were all standing round Roo, watching him have his Extract of Malt. And Roo was saying, ‘Must I?’ and Kanga was saying, ‘Now, Roo dear, you remember what you promised.’

      ‘What is it?’ whispered Tigger to Piglet.

      ‘His Strengthening Medicine,’ said Piglet. ‘He hates it.’

      So Tigger came closer, and he leant over the back of Roo’s chair, and suddenly he put out his tongue, and took one large galollop, and, with a sudden jump of surprise, Kanga said, ‘Oh!’ and then clutched at the spoon again just as it was disappearing, and pulled it safely back out of Tigger’s mouth. But the Extract of Malt had gone.

      ‘Tigger dear!’ said Kanga.

      ‘He’s taken my medicine, he’s taken my medicine, he’s taken my medicine!’ sang Roo happily, thinking it was a tremendous joke.

      Then Tigger looked up at the ceiling, and closed his eyes, and his tongue went round and round his chops, in case he had left any outside, and a peaceful smile came over his face as he said, ‘So that’s what Tiggers like!’

      Which explains why he always lived at Kanga’s house afterwards, and had Extract of Malt for breakfast, dinner, and tea. And sometimes, when Kanga thought he wanted strengthening, he had a spoonful or two of Roo’s breakfast after meals as medicine.

      ‘But I think,’ said Piglet to Pooh, ‘that he’s been strengthened quite enough.’