"You couldn't have looked properly," Mabel protested. "It can't
have vanished."

"You don't know what it can do no more do we. It's no use getting
your quills up, fair lady. Perhaps vanishing itself is just what it
does do. You see, it came off my hand in the bed. We looked
everywhere."

"Would you mind if I looked?" Mabel's eyes implored her little
hostess. "You see, if it's lost it's my fault. It's almost the same as
stealing. That Johnson would say it was just the same. I know he
would."

"Let's all look again," said Cathy, jumping up. "We were rather in a
hurry this morning."

So they looked, and they looked. In the bed, under the bed, under
the carpet, under the furniture. They shook the curtains, they
explored the corners, and found dust and flue, but no ring. They
looked, and they looked. Everywhere they looked. Jimmy even
looked fixedly at the ceiling, as though he thought the ring might
have bounced up there and stuck. But it hadn't.

"Then," said Mabel at last, "your housemaid must have stolen it.
That's all. I shall tell her I think so."

And she would have done it too, but at that moment the front door
banged and they knew that Eliza had gone forth in all the glory of
her best things to meet her "gentleman friend" .