Mr. Quimby grinned. “She said you were impatient.”

Oh, that. People were always telling Ramona not to be so impatient. “What else?” asked Ramona, as she and her father walked toward home.

“You are a good reader, but you are careless about spelling.”

Ramona knew this. Unlike Beezus, who was an excellent speller, Ramona could not believe spelling was important as long as people could understand what she meant. “What else?”

“She said you draw unusually well for a second grader and your printing is the best in the class.”

“What else?”

Mr. Quimby raised one eyebrow as he looked down at Ramona. “She said you were inclined to show off and you sometimes forget your manners.”

Ramona was indignant at this criticism. “I do not! She’s just making that up.” Then she remembered what she had said about her teacher’s pantyhose and felt subdued. She hoped her teacher had not repeated her remark to her father.

“I remember my manners most of the time,” said Ramona, wondering what her teacher had meant by showing off. Being first to raise her hand when she knew the answer?

“Of course you do,” agreed Mr. Quimby. “After all, you are my daughter. Now tell me, how are you going to get that crown off?”

Using both hands, Ramona tried to lift her crown but only succeeded in pulling her hair. The tiny hooks clung fast. Ramona tugged. Ow! That hurt. She looked helplessly up at her father.

Mr. Quimby appeared amused. “Who do you think you are? A Rose Festival Queen?”

Ramona pretended to ignore her father’s question. How silly to act like someone on television when she was a plain old second grader whose tights bagged at the knees again. She hoped her father would not guess. He might. He was good at guessing.

By then Ramona and her father were home. As Mr. Quimby unlocked the front door, he said, “We’ll have to see what we can do about getting you uncrowned before your mother gets home. Any ideas?”

Ramona had no answer, although she was eager to part with the crown before her father guessed what she had been doing. In the kitchen, Mr. Quimby picked off the top of the crown, the part that did not touch Ramona’s hair. That was easy. Now came the hard part.

“Yow!” said Ramona, when her father tried to lift the crown.

“That won’t work,” said her father. “Let’s try one bur at a time.” He went to work on one bur, carefully trying to untangle it from Ramona’s hair, one strand at a time. To Ramona, who did not like to stand still, this process took forever. Each bur was snarled in a hundred hairs, and each hair had to be pulled before the bur was loosened. After a very long time, Mr. Quimby handed a hair-entangled bur to Ramona.