would know what to do with you."

"Hang them both up over the clothes-line to dry," suggested Cricket,
darkly eying the chief culprit. "Dear me! how you do smell!"

"I don't like it pretty well," admitted Zaidee, sniffing at her hands.
"I want to go in and get us washed off now."

"No, stop," commanded Eunice, as Zaidee was starting off. "You would
ruin everything you touched, I suppose. You're reeking wet. You can't go
into the nursery, for you mustn't disturb Kenneth. Auntie said
particularly that we mustn't even make any noise around, so he can
sleep. What _shall_ I do with you?"

"I'll tell you," suggested Cricket, the ever-ready. "Take them down to
the Cove and put them in the water just as they are, and wash off the
worst of it. Then you can take off their clothes and leave them down
there in the bathing-house, for 'Liza to look after when she can."

"Perhaps that might do. I could put on my own bathing-suit and take them
in, and wash off the outside, anyway."

"Yes, let's," cried Zaidee, scampering off in high feather at the
delightful possibility of going into the water all dressed, "just like a
dog."

"Grandma wouldn't care, would she?"

"There's nothing else to do. You go on and I'll tell her. My arm aches
so that I can't walk over there," said Cricket, turning away, very
dolefully. She didn't like to miss the fun of ducking those naughty
children. She watched them out of sight.

"But it isn't really a bit worse of Zaidee to turn that spigot, and
play with the oil, than it was for me to play with the fire," she said,
honestly, to herself, as she walked slowly back to grandma. "I can't say
much. But it _is_ funny how much badder things seem in other people,
when they're really just as worse in ourselves."

And with this not very lucid statement of an undeniable fact, Cricket
walked up the piazza steps and informed grandma of the state of affairs.

Half an hour later Eunice appeared, driving a pair of depressed looking
children before her, clad only in their little blue bathing-suits.

She was hot and flushed, Zaidee cross and rebellious, and Helen tearful
and subdued. Eunice had found that the plan of washing oily children,
with all their clothes on, was much easier in theory than in practice.
And such a task as it had been to get their dripping clothes off! Wet
buttonholes refused to open, shoestrings knotted hopelessly, and
everything stuck flabbily together.

Auntie Jean was with little Kennet