Little Bridget's Bath by Frank R. Stockton

Little Bridget was a good girl and a pretty one, but she had ideas of her own. She liked to study her lessons, to mind her mother, and to behave herself as a little girl should, but she did despise to be washed. There was something about the very smell of soap and the touch of water which made her shrink and shiver, and she would rather have seen the doctor come to her with a teaspoonful of medicine than to have her Aunt Ann approach with a bowlful of water, a towel, and a great piece of soap.

For a long time little Bridget believed that there was no escape from this terrible daily trial, but one bright morning, when she awoke very early, long before any one else in the house, she thought that it was too bad, when everything else was so happy, -- when the birds and butterflies were flying about so gayly in the early sunbeams, and the flowers were all so gay and bright, and smelling so sweet and contented, that she should have to lie there on her little bed until her Aunt Ann came with that horrible soap and towel! She made up her mind! She wouldn't stand it; she would run away before she came to wash her. For one morning she would be happy.