Ramona gave her sister a you-shut-up look. Beezus smiled serenely. Ramona hoped she wasn’t going to start acting like Mary already.

Mrs. Quimby stopped rubbing to look at Ramona. “And where are you going to get this sheep costume?” she asked.

Ramona felt very small. “I—I thought you could make me a sheep suit.”

“When?”

Ramona felt even smaller. “After work?”

Mrs. Quimby sighed. “Ramona, I don’t like to disappoint you, but I’m tired when I come home from work. I don’t have time to do a lot of sewing. A sheep suit would be a lot of work and mean a lot of little pieces to put together, and I don’t even know if I could find a sheep pattern.”

Mr. Quimby joined in the conversation. That was the trouble with a father with time on his hands. He always had time for other people’s arguments. “Ramona,” he said, “you know better than to involve other people in work without asking first.”

Ramona wished her father could sew. He had plenty of time. “Maybe Howie’s grandmother could make me a costume, too,” she suggested.

“We can’t ask favors like that,” said Mrs. Quimby, “and besides material costs money, and with Christmas coming and all we don’t have a nickel to spare.”

Ramona knew all this. She simply hadn’t thought; she had wanted to be a sheep so much. She gulped and sniffed and tried to wiggle her toes inside her shoes. Her feet were growing and her shoes felt tight. She was glad she had not mentioned this to her mother. She would never get a costume if they had to buy shoes.

Mrs. Quimby draped the towel around her shoulders and reached for her comb.

“I can’t be a sheep without a costume.” Ramona sniffed again. She would gladly suffer tight shoes if she could have a costume instead.

“It’s your own fault,” said Mr. Quimby. “You should have thought.”

Ramona now wished she had waited until after Christmas to persuade her father to give up smoking. Then maybe he would be nice to his little girl when she needed a sheep costume.

Mrs. Quimby pulled the comb through her tangled hair. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said. “We have that old white terry-cloth bathrobe with the sleeve seams that pulled out. It’s pretty shabby, but if I bleached it, I might be able to do something with it.”

Ramona stopped sniffing. Her mother would try to make everything all right, but Ramona was not going to risk telling about her tight shoes in case she couldn’t make a costume out of the bathrobe and needed to buy material.