“Makeup on a sheep!” exclaimed a wise person and giggled.

Ramona persisted. “Sheep have black noses,” she hinted. “Maybe I could have a black nose.”

The girls looked at one another. “Don’t tell my mother,” said one, “but I have some mascara. We could make her nose black.”

“Please!” begged Ramona, getting to her feet and coming out from behind the Christmas tree.

The owner of the mascara fumbled in her shoulder bag, which was hanging on a chair, and brought out a tiny box. “Let’s go in the kitchen where there’s a sink,” she said, and when Ramona followed her, she moistened an elf-sized brush, which she rubbed on the mascara in the box. Then she began to brush it onto Ramona’s nose. It tickled, but Ramona held still. “It feels like brushing my teeth only on my nose,” she remarked. The wise person stood back to look at her work and then applied another coat of mascara to Ramona’s nose. “There,” she said at last. “Now you look like a real sheep.”

Ramona felt like a real sheep. “Ba-a-a,” she bleated, a sheep’s way of saying thank you. Ramona felt so much better, she could almost pretend she was woolly. She peeled off her coat and found that the faded pink rabbits really didn’t show much in the dim light. She pranced off among the angels, who had been handed little flashlights, which they were supposed to hold like candles. Instead they were shining them into their mouths to show one another how weird they looked with light showing through their cheeks. The other two sheep stopped jumping when they saw her.

“You don’t look like Ramona,” said Howie.

“B-a-a. I’m not Ramona. I’m a sheep.” The boys did not say one word about Ramona’s pajamas. They wanted black noses too, and when Ramona told them where she got hers, they ran off to find the wise persons. When they returned, they no longer looked like Howie and Davy in sheep suits. They looked like strangers in sheep suits. So I must really look like somebody else, thought Ramona with increasing happiness. Now she could be in the program, and her parents wouldn’t know because they wouldn’t recognize her.

“B-a-a!” bleated three prancing, black-nosed sheep. “B-a-a, b-a-a.”

Mrs. Russo clapped her hands. “Quiet, everybody!” she ordered. “All right, Mary and Joseph, up by the front stairs. Shepherds and sheep next and then wise persons. Angels line up by the back stairs.”

The three sheep pranced over to the shepherds, one of whom said, “Look what we get to herd,” and nudged Ramona with his crook.

“You cut that out,” said Ramona.

“Quietly, everyone,” said Mrs. Russo.