That evening, all three sheep ate inside the pen: the brown-faced one, the black-faced one, and the lamb in its blue scarf. Ahe walked around the fence, checking the boards and ropes as well as the sheep.

“Why mend the pen after we've found the lamb?” Tao asked. Ahe pointed to the closed gap. “Because the problem that let it out was still here.” He put away the spare rope without saying tomorrow.

The Chinese saying means mending the pen after losing a sheep. We cannot recover every loss, but we can still put a problem right when we find it. The evening breeze stirred the blue scarf. The new knots stayed firmly in place.