the couch. She was in no hurry, as her father put it, to tackle her room.

Ramona sat there behind the couch, a

kettle resting on its bottom, thinking. She

thought how embarrassed she would be if

her family found out she had worn her

pajamas to school. She thought about her

mother and Beezus and what good friends

they had become, almost as if they were the

same age.

As Ramona sat letting these thoughts

slide through her mind, the telephone rang

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in the kitchen. Above the growl of the

vacuum cleaner, she heard her mother say,

“Why hel lo!” as if she were surprised to hear from the person calling.

Who had surprised her mother? Ramona

listened hard. Beezus must have been curi-

ous, too, for she turned off the vacuum

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cleaner, which made eavesdropping easier for Ramona.

“Oh . . . ? Yes . . .Yes . . . Oh, does she?”

Mrs. Quimby went on in a friendly polite

voice quite different from the friendly voice she used when she talked to her sister, the

girls’ Aunt Beatrice.

Who does what? Ramona wondered, alert,

since she was usually the one who had done

something. Her mother laughed. Ramona

felt indignant without knowing why. She

could not think of anything she had done

that anyone would telephone her mother

about.

Mrs. Quimby continued for some time,

but Ramona could make no sense out of the

conversation. Finally her mother said,

“Thank you for telling me, Mrs. Rudge.”

Then she hung up.

The sound of her teacher’s name gave

Ramona a strange feeling, as if she were in

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an elevator that had suddenly gone down when she expected it to go up. When she

stopped feeling as if the floor had dropped

beneath her, she was furious. So that was

why her mother had laughed. Mrs. Rudge

had told! She had telephoned her mother

and tattled. And her mother thought it was

funny! Ramona would never forgive either

of them. Never, never, never.

Beezus turned on the vacuum cleaner

again. Ramona crawled on her hands and

knees from behind the couch and was sur-

prised to see that her mother had come into

the living room.“What have you been doing

back there?” asked Mrs. Quimby.

“Resting on my bottom,” said Ramona

with a scowl.

Beezus switched off the vacuum cleaner

again. Her turn had come to foresee an interesting argument.

Ramona faced her mother. “Mrs. Rudge

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told!” she shouted. “And she promised she

would never tell. And then you had to go

and laugh!”

“Now calm down.” Mrs. Quimby plucked

a fluff of dust from Ramona’s sleeve.

“I won’t calm down!” yelled Ramona so loud her father came down the hall to see

what was going on.“I hate Mrs. Rudge! She’s a tattletale. She doesn’t love me and she tells fibs!” Ramona saw her mother and father

exchange a familiar look that said,Which of

us is going to handle this one?