Read "The Pelicans" by E.M. Delafield online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
It was in a very little while that Mrs. Tregaskis became fully aware of the fallacy in her hopeful theory that the crisis was over for the younger of her two adopted daughters.
"I can't think how I could ever have been so blind. Give children an inch and they'll take an ell! I might have guessed that Frances would develop some fanatic notion of this kind. Why _did_ I ever let her go to that wretched convent? She's thought of nothing else ever since, and now she tells me that they're ‘willing to receive her' into the novitiate there. Willing, indeed! I should think they were!"