So Jack decided to stay there for a week or two, and earn a little money before he went any further. The answer to his letter came in due course from his mother, who was very glad to have heard from her boy. She was well, she said, but there was very little improvement in his father's condition. The bit of stuff he had sent in his previous letter was certainly a piece of one of Lizzie's frocks, and looked as though it had been torn off the hem at the bottom. They had received no news of her, and the police seem to have given up all hope of tracing her now, wrote poor Mrs. Betts.