“Yow! Yipe! Leave me some hair,” said Ramona, picturing a bald circle around her head.

“I’m trying,” said Mr. Quimby and began on the next bur.

Ramona sighed. Standing still doing nothing was tiresome.

After what seemed like a long time, Beezus came home from school. She took one look at Ramona and began to laugh.

“I don’t suppose you ever did anything dumb,” said Ramona, short of patience and anxious lest her sister guess why she was wearing the remains of a crown. “What about the time you—”

“No arguments,” said Mr. Quimby. “We have a problem to solve, and it might be a good idea if we solved it before your mother comes home from work.”

Much to Ramona’s annoyance, her sister sat down to watch. “How about soaking?” suggested Beezus. “It might soften all those millions of little hooks.”

“Yow! Yipe!” said Ramona. “You’re pulling too hard.”

Mr. Quimby laid another hair-filled bur on the table. “Maybe we should try. This isn’t working.”

“It’s about time she washed her hair anyway,” said Beezus, a remark Ramona felt was entirely unnecessary. Nobody could shampoo hair full of burs.

Ramona knelt on a chair with her head in a sinkful of warm water for what seemed like hours until her knees ached and she had a crick in her neck. “Now, Daddy?” she asked at least once a minute.

“Not yet,” Mr. Quimby answered, feeling a bur. “Nope,” he said at last. “This isn’t going to work.”

Ramona lifted her dripping head from the sink. When her father tried to dry her hair, the bur hooks clung to the towel. He jerked the towel loose and draped it around Ramona’s shoulders.

“Well, live and learn,” said Mr. Quimby. “Beezus, scrub some potatoes and throw them in the oven. We can’t have your mother come home and find we haven’t started supper.”

When Mrs. Quimby arrived, she took one look at her husband trying to untangle Ramona’s wet hair from the burs, groaned, sank limply onto a kitchen chair, and began to laugh.

By now Ramona was tired, cross, and hungry. “I don’t see anything funny,” she said sullenly.

Mrs. Quimby managed to stop laughing. “What on earth got into you?” she asked.

Ramona considered. Was this a question grown-ups asked just to be asking a question, or did her mother expect an answer? “Nothing,” was a safe reply. She would never tell her family how she happened to be wearing a crown of burs. Never, not even if they threw her into a dungeon.

“Beezus, bring me the scissors,” said Mrs. Quimby.

Ramona clapped her hands over the burs. “No!” she shrieked and stamped her foot. “I won’t let you cut off my hair! I won’t! I won’t! I won’t!”