Beezus handed her mother the scissors and gave her sister some advice. “Stop yelling. If you go to bed with burs in your hair, you’ll really get messed up.”

Ramona had to face the wisdom of Beezus’s words. She stopped yelling to consider the problem once more. “All right,” she said, as if she were granting a favor, “but I want Daddy to do it.” Her father would work with care while her mother, always in a hurry since she was working full time, would go snip-snip-snip and be done with it. Besides, supper would be prepared faster and would taste better if her mother did the cooking.

“I am honored,” said Mr. Quimby. “Deeply honored.”

Mrs. Quimby did not seem sorry to hand over the scissors. “Why don’t you go someplace else to work while Beezus and I get supper on the table?”

Mr. Quimby led Ramona into the living room, where he turned on the television set. “This may take time,” he explained, as he went to work. “We might as well watch the news.”

Ramona was still anxious. “Don’t cut any more than you have to, Daddy,” she begged, praying the margarine boy would not appear on the screen. “I don’t want everyone at school to make fun of me.” The newscaster was talking about strikes and a lot of things Ramona did not understand.

“The merest smidgin,” promised her father. Snip. Snip. Snip. He laid a hair-ensnarled bur in an ashtray. Snip. Snip. Snip. He laid another bur beside the first.

“Does it look awful?” asked Ramona.

“As my grandmother would say, ‘It will never be noticed from a trotting horse.’”

Ramona let out a long, shuddery sigh, the closest thing to crying without really crying. Snip. Snip. Snip. Ramona touched the side of her head. She still had hair there. More hair than she expected. She felt a little better.

The newscaster disappeared from the television screen, and there was that boy again singing:

Forget your pots, forget your pans.

It’s not too late to change your plans.

Ramona thought longingly of the days before her father lost his job, when they could forget their pots and pans and change their plans. She watched the boy open his mouth wide and sink his teeth into that fat hamburger with lettuce, tomato, and cheese hanging out of the bun. She swallowed and said, “I bet that boy has a lot of fun with his million dollars.” She felt so sad. The Quimbys really needed a million dollars. Even one dollar would help.

Snip. Snip. Snip. “Oh, I don’t know,” said Mr. Quimby. “Money is handy, but it isn’t everything.”

“I wish I could earn a million dollars like that boy,” said Ramona. This was the closest she would ever come to telling how she happened to set a crown of burs on her head.