That's what comes of vanity," said Felicity, than whom no vainer girl existed.
Poor Cecily paid dearly enough for HER vanity.

She spent a bad forenoon, made no easier by her mother's severe rebukes.

For an hour she "soaked" her head; that is, she stood over a panful of warm water and kept dipping her head in with tightly shut eyes.

Finally her hair softened sufficiently to be disentangled from the curl papers; and then Aunt Janet subjected it to a merciless shampoo.

Eventually they got all the mucilage washed out of it and Cecily spent the remainder of the forenoon sitting before the open oven door in the hot kitchen drying her ill-used tresses.