After the little flock had been watered all around, Zaidie’s quick eyes spied a bottle of vaseline on the wash-stand. It had been left there by mistake. All those things were generally put away in a little medicine closet, safely out of the children’s reach. It was quite a good-sized jar, and entirely full. Zaidie took out the cork.
“I think I’ve got a sore spot on me somewhere,” she said, feeling carefully all over her face. “I think I need some vasling on it. Do you see a sore spot on me, Helen?”
Helen looked, but could not find any place that seemed to need vaseline, even after the closest study of Zaidie’s round, satin-cheeked little face.
“Put it on anywhere,” she advised. “Perhaps it may get sore, and then the vasling will be already on.”
Smearing vaseline all over Zaidie’s face led, of course, to bedaubing Helen and Kenneth, also, with a liberal plaster of the sticky stuff.
“Doesn’t it stay on beautifully? Let’s paint the bathroom with it?” suggested Zaidie, “and make it all pretty. We can take our teeth-brushes.”
This idea was an inspiration. In a moment, arming themselves with their tooth-brushes, the children fell energetically to work. In five minutes the bathroom was a perfect bower of vaseline, and the small workers were sticky from head to foot.
Meanwhile Marjorie read on, obliviously.
“Doesn’t it make the room look beautiful?” cried Zaidie, rapturously. “I guess ’Liza’ll be pleased when she sees how pretty we’ve made it. And see the wood, too. It shines splendidly.”
Here an unguarded flourish on Kenneth’s part left a long smear of vaseline on Zaidie’s short, smooth locks.