One Friday evening, sometime later, the Pattersons were preparing to go out. Maggie went to her jewelry box to get a ring. She noticed that three of her nicest were not there. "Pat, have you seen my rings?"

"No, dear. I haven’t been in your jewelry box," Pat answered patiently.

This was exasperating, Maggie thought. Her jewelry was either on her person or in her jewelry box. She was very meticulous about that. She tried to think when she had worn any of the rings. I had been months. Rats! Then she thought of her purses. Very improbable. Maggie was as meticulous with her purses as with her jewelry. She had a routine that never changed.

Maggie had a mania for purses. She had hundreds of them, and she selected a purse with the same care and thought that she gave to her dress and jewelry. Maggie was very particular. She never, never carried the same purse twice in a row. When she returned from being out, she always emptied her purse, put the contents on her dresser, and put the purse away in her closet. Then, when she went out again, she chose a new purse.

No, she could not have left the rings in a purse. Still, it was worth checking. But after looking into thirty or forty purses that she might have used in the past few months, she realized the rings could not have been left in any of them. She was very upset, but she went on with the evening, choosing other jewelry, and the rings slipped to the back of her mind.

A year later Pat was gently chiding Maggie about her purses. "Maggie, do you suppose we could get rid of a few purses?" The closet is getting crowded."

Maggie took the hint and began sorting through them to pick out those she would keep. In the back of the closet were several boxes of purses she hadn’t used in months, even years, and as she went through these, she opened one for no particular reason. There in the bottom of that purse were her three lost rings.