After that telephone call Mr. Quimby stopped reaching for cigarettes that were not there and began to whistle as he ran the vacuum cleaner and folded the clothes from the dryer. The worried frown disappeared from Mrs. Quimby’s forehead. Beezus looked even more calm and serene. Ramona, however, made a mistake. She told her mother about her tight shoes. Mrs. Quimby then wasted a Saturday afternoon shopping for shoes when she could have been sewing on Ramona’s costume. As a result, when they drove to church the night of the Christmas-carol program, Ramona was the only unhappy member of the family.

Mr. Quimby sang as he drove:

“There’s a little wheel

a-turning in my heart.

There’s a little wheel

a-turning in my heart.”

Ramona loved that song because it made her think of Howie, who liked machines. Tonight, however, she was determined not to enjoy her father’s singing.

Rain blew against the car, headlights shone on the pavement, the windshield wipers splip-splopped. Mrs. Quimby leaned back, tired but relaxed. Beezus smiled her gentle Virgin Mary smile that Ramona had found so annoying for the past three weeks.

Ramona sulked. Someplace above those cold, wet clouds the very same star was shining that had guided the Three Wise Men to Bethlehem. On a night like this they never would have made it.

Mr. Quimby sang on, “Oh, I feel like shouting in my heart….”

Ramona interrupted her father’s song. “I don’t care what anybody says,” she burst out. “If I can’t be a good sheep, I am not going to be a sheep at all.” She yanked off the white terry-cloth headdress with pink-lined ears that she was wearing and stuffed it into the pocket of her car coat. She started to pull her father’s rolled-down socks from her hands because they didn’t really look like hooves, but then she decided they kept her hands warm. She squirmed on the lumpy terry-cloth tail sewn to the seat of her pajamas. Ramona could not pretend that faded pajamas printed with an army of pink rabbits, half of them upside down, made her look like a sheep, and Ramona was usually good at pretending.

Mrs. Quimby’s voice was tired. “Ramona, your tail and headdress were all I could manage, and I had to stay up late last night to finish those. I simply don’t have time for complicated sewing.”

Ramona knew that. Her family had been telling her so for the past three weeks.

“A sheep should be woolly,” said Ramona. “A sheep should not be printed with pink bunnies.”

“You can be a sheep that has been shorn,” said Mr. Quimby, who was full of jokes now that he was going to work again. “Or how about a wolf in sheep’s clothing?”