bout that time, Totto-chan had two great ambitions. One was to wear athletic bloomers, and the other was to braid her hair. Watching older school-girls with long braids in the train, she decided she wanted to wear her hair that way, too. While the rest of the little girls in her class wore their hair short, with bangs, Totto-chan wore hers longer, parted at the side and tied with a ribbon. Mother liked it that way, and besides, Totto-chan wanted it to grow so she could wear pigtails.

Finally, one day she got Mother to braid her hair into two little pigtails. With the ends secured by rubber bands and tied with slender ribbons, she felt like an older student. When she looked at herself in the mirror, she realized that, unlike the girls in the train, her braids were thin and short and really looked like pigs' tails, but she ran to Rocky and held them up proudly for him to see. Rocky blinked once or twice.

"I wish I could braid your hair, too," she said.

When she got on the train she held her head as still as she could for fear the braids might come undone. "How nice it would be," she thought, "if someone noticed them on the train and said, 'What lovely braids!' " But nobody did. When she got to school, however, Miyo-chan, Sakko-chan, and Keiko Aoki, who were all in her class, exclaimed in unison, "Oooh! Pigtails!" and she was awfully pleased and let the girls feel them.

None of the boys seemed impressed. But all of a sudden, after lunch, a boy from her class named Oe said in a loud voice, “Wow! Totto-chan's got a new hairdo!"

Totto-chan was thrilled to think one of the boys had noticed, and said proudly, "They're pigtails."

Whereupon he came over, took hold of them with both hands, and said, "I'm tired. I think I'll hang onto them for a while. Gee, they're much nicer than the hand snaps on the train!" But that wasn't the end of her trouble.

Oe was twice as big as skinny little Totto-chan. In face, he was the biggest and fattest boy in the class. So when he pulled on her pigtails she staggered and fell smack on her bottom. To have them called hand scraps was hurtful enough, without being dragged to the ground as well. But when Oe tried to pull her up by her pigtails, with a "Heave-ho, heave-ho!" just like at the Sports Day Tug of War, Totto-chan burst into tears.

To Totto-chan, pigtails were the emblem of an older girl. She had expected everyone to be very polite to her because of them. Crying, she ran to the headmaster's office. When he heard her knocking on the door, sobbing, he opened it, and bent down as usual so their faces were level.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

After checking to see if her pigtails were still properly braided, she said, "Oe pulled them, saying, 'Heave-ho, heave-ho.' "

The headmaster looked at her hair. In contrast to her tearful face, her little pigtails looked as if they were dancing gaily. He sat down and had Totto-chan sit down, too, facing him. As usual, heedless of his missing teeth, he grinned.

"Don't cry," he said. "Your hair looks lovely.

"Do you like it?" she asked, rather shyly, raising her tear-stained face.

"It's terrific!" he said.

Totto-chan stopped crying, and got down from her chair saying, “I won’t cry any more even if Oe says 'Heave-ho.' "

The headmaster nodded approval with a grin.

Totto-chan smiled, too. Her smiling face suited her pigtails. Bowing to the headmaster, she ran back and began playing with the other children.

She had almost forgotten about having cried when she saw Oe standing in front of her, scratching his head.

"I'm sorry I pulled them," he said in a loud, flat voice. "I've been scolded by the headmaster. He said you've got to be nice to girls. He said to be gentle with girls and look after them."

Totto-chan was somewhat amazed. She had never heard anyone before say you had to be nice to girls. Boys were always the important ones. In the families she knew where there were lots of children,-it was always the boys who were served first at meals and at snack time, and when girls spoke, their mothers would say, "Little girls should be seen and not heard."

In spite of all that, the headmaster had told Oe that girls should be looked after. It seemed strange to Totto-chan. And then she thought how nice that was. It was nice to be looked after.

As for Oe, it was a shock. Fancy being told to be gentle and nice to girls! Moreover, it was the first and last time at Tomoe that he was ever scolded by the headmaster, and he never forgot that day.