Eeyore had a house, in a sad corner of the Hundred Acre Wood, where the wind came through the trees a little harder than it did anywhere else. The house was small, and made of sticks, and Eeyore had built it himself. This had taken three days and a great deal of effort, and Eeyore was, in his own quiet way, rather proud of it.

Then, one Tuesday, the wind came and blew it down.

Eeyore stood and looked at where his house had been. All the sticks were on the ground. Some of them were in places they definitely had not been before. A few had ended up in the thistle patch, which Eeyore noted with the resignation of a donkey who has spent a long time expecting things like this to happen.

"There it is," said Eeyore. "Or rather, there it isn't. One does one's best. And then it falls down. I've said it before. I'll say it again. Nothing to be done."

Pooh and Piglet came to help, because that is what Pooh and Piglet did. Rabbit came with a lot of suggestions. Tigger came too, and bounced about with such enthusiasm that Rabbit had to ask him to stop, twice.

They picked up the sticks. They put them back. The house stood up again, more or less in its old shape, though Eeyore noticed that one of the walls leaned a little more than it had before.

"Thank you," said Eeyore. He said it carefully, the way he said most things, as if he was fairly sure his thank you would not be enough to prevent the next unfortunate thing from happening.

The others went home.

Eeyore went inside his house. He lay down in the corner. He waited for the wind.

The house stood for eleven days.

Eeyore spent most of those eleven days expecting it not to. Every time the wind moved in the trees, he looked at the walls. Every time it rained, he checked the corners. He did not unpack his things, because there did not seem to be much point. He was, he felt, being very sensible and very realistic.

On the twelfth day, the wind came back.

The house fell down again.

Eeyore stood in the middle of his sticks. He looked at the wreckage. He waited to feel the way he usually felt when a house fell down on him. He waited for the heavy, flat, told-you-so feeling.

It did not come. Or it came, but not as much as he had expected.

What he felt, instead, was tired. Not tired of the house falling. Tired of waiting for it to.

"Eleven days," said Eeyore, out loud, to nobody in particular. "I had eleven whole days, and I spent them waiting for this. That seems, that seems like rather a waste, now that I think about it."

He stood for a long time among the sticks. He looked at the corner of the field where the wind always came from. It was a flat, open corner, with no trees to slow the wind down before it got to his house. He had built his house facing into that corner, the way you might if you were not really thinking about it.

Eeyore picked up a long stick. He moved it. Then he moved another one.

He worked quietly, and slowly, and he did not tell anyone what he was doing, because he was not at all sure it would work, and he did not want anyone to watch if it didn't.

The new house looked a little odd. It leaned slightly to one side, in a way that made it look as if it were listening to something far away. Rabbit would certainly have had something to say about it.

But when the next wind came, a larger, more determined sort of wind than usual, the new house wobbled. It creaked. It bent a little.

And then it stayed up.

"Oh," said Eeyore. "Well. That's unexpected."

He sat in his new house for a while, listening to the wind go around it instead of through it. He thought about how much time he had spent expecting the worst, when sometimes, a stick in a different place is all that is needed.

But the house was not the only thing he thought about.

Eeyore went out. He walked through the wood until he found Pooh, sitting on a log in the sun, eating something. Eeyore stood next to him for a while. Pooh went on eating. Eeyore looked at the trees. Then he said a thing that was, for Eeyore, rather difficult to say.

"I don't mind that you all come when the house falls," he said. "I do appreciate it. But I wonder, and you don't have to, I just wonder if sometimes, someone might come before it falls. Not to do anything. Just to be here for a bit."

Pooh stopped eating.

"I didn't know you wanted that," said Pooh.

"No," said Eeyore. "I didn't say so. I am saying it now."

Pooh thought about this for a moment. Then he said, very simply, "Then I will come. Tomorrow, if you like. And the day after, if you like that too."

Eeyore looked at him for a long time.

"Yes," he said. "I think I would like that."

Pooh came the next day. He did not bring anything. He did not have any particular plan. He sat with Eeyore under the lopsided wall of the new house, and they watched the clouds for a while, and Pooh told Eeyore about a poem he was thinking about writing but had not written yet.

After a while Pooh went home.

He came back the day after that. And the day after that.

Eeyore did not say anything about this, because saying something about it might have made it harder for Pooh to keep doing it. But Eeyore noticed, on the days when Pooh came, that the wind seemed less interested in his house. He thought this might be his imagination. Or it might be that the wind preferred to come when no one was watching. Eeyore was not sure.

That winter, the big frost came, and the house fell down a third time.

Eeyore stood and looked at his sticks, as he always did. He thought, here we are again.

And then he heard footsteps.

Pooh's footsteps, coming up the path. Then Piglet's smaller ones. Then Tigger's bouncy ones, and Kanga's quick ones, and the little pat-pat-pat of Roo's small feet beside her. Even Rabbit, with a list.

"We thought we would come before it fell," said Pooh. "But it seems we were a little too late. We brought things, anyway."

They built it together. They were not always sure which sticks went where, and Rabbit had rather a lot of opinions, and at one point Tigger sat on part of it by accident.

But they built it. And when it was done, Eeyore looked at his house, his lopsided, put-together-by-everyone house, and felt something he did not have a very good name for. It was not quite happiness. But it was close to happiness. Close enough.

After that, when the house fell down, there were always footsteps on the path before Eeyore had quite finished looking at the sticks. He never said very much about this. But he started building his house a little less carefully, if anyone had been paying attention. Just slightly. Just enough to make a little more room on the inside.

In case someone wanted to come in out of the cold.