Then young Mr. Touchett explained. "My mother, you know, has been
spending the winter in America, and we're expecting her back. She
writes that she has discovered a niece and that she has invited
her to come out with her."

"I see,--very kind of her," said Lord Warburton. Is the young
lady interesting?"

"We hardly know more about her than you; my mother has not gone
into details. She chiefly communicates with us by means of
telegrams, and her telegrams are rather inscrutable. They say
women don't know how to write them, but my mother has thoroughly
mastered the art of condensation. 'Tired America, hot weather
awful, return England with niece, first steamer decent cabin.'
That's the sort of message we get from her--that was the last
that came. But there had been another before, which I think
contained the first mention of the niece. 'Changed hotel, very
bad, impudent clerk, address here. Taken sister's girl, died last
year, go to Europe, two sisters, quite independent.' Over that my
father and I have scarcely stopped puzzling; it seems to admit of
so many interpretations."

"There's one thing very clear in it," said the old man; "she has
given the hotel-clerk a dressing."

"I'm not sure even of that, since he has driven her from the
field. We thought at first that the sister mentioned might be the
sister of the clerk; but the subsequent mention of a niece seems
to prove that the allusion is to one of my aunts. Then there was
a question as to whose the two other sisters were; they are