the whole world understood how hard it was to go to the Kemps’ house after school when she did not have a bicycle.

Mrs. Quimby relented. “I know it isn’t

easy,” she said with a half smile, “but don’t give up.” She gathered up the bills and check-book and went into the kitchen, where she

began to write checks at the kitchen table.

Ramona wandered into the dining room

to seek comfort from her father. She laid her cheek against the sleeve of his plaid shirt and asked, “Daddy, what are you studying?”

Once again Mr. Quimby threw down his

pencil.“I am studying the cognitive processes of children,” he answered.

Ramona raised her head to look at him.

159

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“How kids think,” her father told her.

Ramona did not like the sound of this

subject at all. “Why are you studying that?”

she demanded. Some things should be pri-

vate, and how children thought was one of

them. She did not like the idea of grown-

ups snooping around in thick books trying

to find out.

“That is exactly what I have been asking

myself.” Mr. Quimby was serious. “Why am

I studying this stuff when we have bills to pay?”

“Well, I don’t think you should,” said

Ramona. “It’s none of your business how

kids think.” Then she quickly added, because she did not want her father to drop out of school and be a checker again, “There are

lots of other things you could study. Things like fruit flies.”

Mr. Quimby smiled at Ramona and rum-

pled her hair.“I doubt if anyone could figure 160

out how you think,” he said, which made

Ramona feel better, as if her secret thoughts were still safe.

Mr. Quimby sat gnawing his pencil and

staring out the window at the rain. Beezus, who had run out of fake sobs, emerged from her room, red-eyed and damp-haired, to stalk about the house not speaking to anyone.

Ramona flopped down on the couch. She

161

hated rainy Sundays, especially this one, and longed for Monday when she could escape

to school. The Quimbys’ house seemed to

have grown smaller during the day until it was no longer big enough to hold her family and all its problems. She tried not to think of the half-overheard conversations of her parents after the girls had gone to bed, grown-up talk that Ramona understood just enough to know her parents were concerned about

their future.

Ramona had deep, secret worries of her

own. She worried that her father might

accidentally be locked in the frozen-food

warehouse, where it was so cold it sometimes snowed indoors.What if he was filling a big order, and the men who were lucky enough

to get small orders to fill left work ahead of him and forgot and locked the warehouse,

and he couldn’t get out and froze to death? Of course that wouldn’t happen. “But it might,”