Precious and Grace Read Free

time drumming useless information into the heads of young women who would never be more than the second-rate occupants of dead-end jobs.
    Mma Makutsi had been scandalised by Violet’s behaviour. She found it hard to believe that anybody could so blatantly paint her nails during accountancy lectures, blowing ostentatiously on her handiwork to dry it more rapidly even while the lecturer was explaining the principles of double-entry book-keeping. Nor could she believe that anybody would keep up a running conversation with like-minded companions, discussing the merits of various men, while no less a person than the vice-principal of the college tried to demonstrate how a properly devised system of filing could save a lot of trouble and anxiety in the future.
    Violet eventually graduated on the same day as Mma Makutsi, but while the latter covered herself in glory and was singled out by the principal herself in her address, Violet scraped past with a bare fifty per cent, the lowest pass mark possible, and only awarded, everybody suspected, because the college authorities could not face the prospect of Violet repeating the course and being on their books for another six months.
    In the years that followed, Violet Sephotho lost no opportunity to put down or decry Mma Makutsi. And when Mma Makutsi was taken on by the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, she transferred her venom to Mma Ramotswe and the agency in general.
    “The so-called No. 1 so-called Ladies’ so-called Detective Agency,” Violet publicly sneered. “No. 1 Disaster, more likely, with that Grace—I call her Graceless!—Makutsi from somewhere up in the sticks. Bobonong, I believe—what a place! And that stupid fat lady who calls herself Precious but is really just a big waste of space, thinking she can solve people’s problems! Far better go to a decent witch doctor and get him to sell you some powder than take your issues to that dump! Boring! Big time!”
    Mma Ramotswe was aware of all this, and bore it with patience. She had always believed that people who were nasty or unkind to others were only like that because there was something wrong in their lives, and that people who had something wrong in their lives were not to be despised or hated, but were to be pitied. So although Violet Sephotho was in one sense an enemy, this was not of Mma Ramotswe’s making and she would gladly have had it otherwise. Mma Makutsi was not of this view. She thought that Violet Sephotho was the way she was because that was how she was ordained to be.
    “You cannot make a jackal into a hyena,” said Mma Makutsi. “We are what we are. That is just the way it is.”
    “But sometimes we can change,” said Mma Ramotswe. “That is well known.”
    “I do not think so, Mma,” said Mma Makutsi. “And by the way, Mma Ramotswe, when you say that something is well known, I think that you are just saying what you think. Then you say that it is well known so that people will not argue with you.”
    “That’s not true,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But let us not argue, Mma, because I believe it’s time for tea and the more time you spend arguing, the less tea you can drink.”
    Mma Makutsi smiled. “Now
that,
Mma, I think, is certainly well known.”

CHAPTER TWO

THE DOG WAS ALMOST LATE
    T HOUGHTS ABOUT FRIENDS and colleagues could—and did—occupy the entire journey from Zebra Drive to the offices of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. But now, as she parked her white van behind the building they shared with Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, Mma Ramotswe stopped thinking about the people in her life and began to contemplate the tasks of the day ahead. There were several complicated invoices to draw up, and that, she thought, would take the entire morning. Some weeks ago, at Mma Makutsi’s instigation, the agency had introduced a new system of calculating fees. In the past they had simply charged what they thought a reasonable sum—often, Mma Makutsi observed, on the low side.