{"product_id":"in-the-company-of-cheerful-ladies-isbn-9781400075706","title":"In the Company of Cheerful Ladies","description":"\u003cb\u003eFans around the world adore the bestselling No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series and its proprietor, Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s premier lady detective. In this charming series, Mma  Ramotswe—with help from her loyal associate, Grace Makutsi—navigates her cases and her personal life with wisdom, good humor, and the occasional cup of tea.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePrecious is busier than usual at the detective agency when she discovers an intruder in her house on Zebra Drive—and perhaps even more baffling—a pumpkin on her porch. Her associate, Mma Makutsi, also has a full plate. She's taken up dance lessons, only to be partnered with a man with two left feet. And at Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, where Mr J.L.B. Matekoni is already overburdened with work, one of his apprentices has run off with a wealthy older woman. But what finally rattles Mma Ramotswe’s normally unshakable composure is a visitor who forces her to confront a difficult secret from her past.\"A literary confection of . . . gossamer deliciousness. . . . There is no end to the pleasure that may be extracted from [this book].\" \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"Enchanting. . . .  \u003ci\u003eIn the Company of Cheerful Ladies\u003c\/i\u003e may be the most compelling of the lot.\" —\u003ci\u003eDaily News\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"Put on the teakettle, find your place in the sun and settle in for a genteel journey. . . . McCall Smith has brewed up a gem of a story as rich as . . . red bush tea.\" \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eRocky Mountain News\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Beguiling, lyrical. . . . \u003ci\u003eCheerful Ladies\u003c\/i\u003e is blessed with . . . McCall Smith's richly detailed portraits of life in Africa and his flair for storytelling with an engaging cast of fully realized characters.\" —\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003eAlexander McCall Smith is the author of the huge international phenomenon, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, and The Sunday Philosophy Club series. He was born in what is now known as Zimbabwe and he was a law professor at the University of Botswana and at Edinburgh University. He lives in Scotland. Visit his Web site at \u003cu\u003ewww.alexandermccallsmith.com\u003c\/u\u003e.Chapter One\u003cbr\u003eHonesty, Tea, and Things in the Kitchen\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMma Ramotswe was sitting alone in her favourite café, on the edge of the  shopping centre at the Gaborone end of the Tlokweng Road. It was a Saturday,  the day that she preferred above all others, a day on which one might do as  much or as little as one liked, a day to have lunch with a friend at the  President Hotel, or, as on that day, to sit by oneself and think about the  events of the week and the state of the world. This café was a good place to  be, for several reasons. Firstly, there was the view, that of a stand of  eucalyptus trees with foliage of a comforting dark green which made a sound  like the sea when the wind blew through the leaves. Or that, at least, was  the sound which Mma Ramotswe imagined the sea to make. She had never seen  the ocean, which was far away from land-locked Botswana; far away across the  deserts of Namibia, across the red sands and the dry mountains. But she  could imagine it when she listened to the eucalyptus trees in the wind and  closed her eyes. Perhaps one day she would see it, and would stand on the  shore and let the waves wash over her feet. Perhaps.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe other advantage which this café had was the fact that the tables  were out on an open verandah, and there was always something to watch. That  morning, for instance, she had seen a minor dispute between a teenage girl  and her boyfriend-an exchange of words which she did not catch but which was  clear enough in its meaning-and she had witnessed a woman scrape the side of  a neighbouring car while she tried to park. The woman had stopped, quickly  inspected the damage, and had then driven off. Mma Ramotswe had watched this  incredulously, and had half-risen to her feet to protest, but was too late:  the woman's car had by then turned the corner and disappeared and she did  not even have time to see its number-plate.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe had sat down again and poured herself another cup of tea. It was  not true that such a thing could not have happened in the old Botswana-it  could-but it was undoubtedly true that this was much more likely to happen  today. There were many selfish people about these days, people who seemed  not to care if they scraped the cars of others or bumped into people while  walking on the street. Mma Ramotswe knew that this was what happened when  towns became bigger and people became strangers to one another; she knew too  that this was a consequence of increasing prosperity, which, curiously  enough, just seemed to bring out greed and selfishness. But even if she knew  why all this happened, it did not make it any easier to bear. The rest of  the world might become as rude as it wished, but this was not the way of  things in Botswana and she would always defend the old Botswana way of doing  things.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e         Life was far better, thought Mma Ramotswe, if we knew who we were. In  the days when she was a schoolgirl in Mochudi, the village in which she had  been born, everybody had known exactly who you were, and they often knew  exactly who your parents, and your parents' parents, had been. Today when  she went back to Mochudi, people would greet her as if she had barely been  away; her presence needed no explanation. And even here in Gaborone, where  things had grown so much, people still knew precisely who she was. They  would know that she was Precious Ramotswe, founder of the No. 1 Ladies'  Detective Agency, daughter of the late Obed Ramotswe, and now the wife  (after a rather protracted engagement) of that most gracious of mechanics,  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, proprietor of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. And some of  them at least would also know that she lived in Zebra Drive, that she had a  tiny white van, and that she employed one Grace Makutsi as her assistant.  And so the ramifications of relationships and ties would spread further  outwards, and the number of things that might be known would grow. Some  might know that Mma Makutsi had a brother, Richard, who was now late; that  she had achieved the previously unheard-of result of ninety-seven per cent  in the final examinations of the Botswana Secretarial College; and that  following upon the success of the Kalahari Typing School for Men, she had  recently moved to a rather better house in Extension Two. Knowledge of this  sort-everyday, human knowledge-helped to keep society together and made it  difficult to scrape the car of another without feeling guilty about it and  without doing something to let the owner know. Not that this appeared to  make any difference to that selfish woman in the car, who had left the  scrape unreported, who clearly did not care.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e         But there was no point in throwing up one's hands in despair. People  had always done that-the throwing up of hands, the shrug-but one got nowhere  in doing so. The world might have changed for the worse in some respects,  but in others it was a much better place, and it was important to remember  this. Lights went off in some places, but went on in others. Look at  Africa-there had been so much to shake one's head over-corruption, civil  wars, and the rest-but there was also so much which was now much better.  There had been slavery in the past, and all the suffering which that had  brought, and there had been all the cruelties of apartheid just those few  miles away over the border, but all that was now over. There had been  ignorance, but now more and more people were learning to write, and were  graduating from universities. Women had been held in such servitude, and now  they could vote and express themselves and claim lives for themselves, even  if there were still many men who did not want such things to be. These were  the good things that happened and one had to remember them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e         Mma Ramotswe raised her tea cup to her lips and looked out over the  brim. At the edge of the car park, immediately in front of the café, a small  market had been set up, with traders' stalls and trays of colourful goods.  She watched as a man attempted to persuade a customer to buy a pair of  sunglasses. The woman tried on several pairs, but was not satisfied, and  moved on to the next stall. There she pointed to a small piece of silver  jewellery, a bangle, and the trader, a short man wearing a wide-brimmed felt  hat, passed it across to her to try on. Mma Ramotswe watched as the woman  held out her wrist to be admired by the trader, who nodded encouragement.  But the woman seemed not to agree with his verdict, and handed the bangle  back, pointing to another item at the back of the stall. And at that moment,  while the trader turned round to stretch for whatever it was that she had  singled out, the woman quickly slipped another bangle into the pocket of the  jacket she was wearing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e         Mma Ramotswe gasped. This time, she could not sit back and allow a  crime to be committed before her very eyes. If people did nothing, then no  wonder that things were getting worse. So she stood up, and began to walk  firmly towards the stall where the woman had now engaged the trader in  earnest discussion about the merits of the merchandise which he was showing  her.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e         \"Excuse me, Mma.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e         The voice came from behind her, and Mma Ramotswe turned round to see  who had addressed her. It was the waitress, a young woman whom Mma Ramotswe  had not seen at the café before.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e         \"Yes, Mma, what is it?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e         The waitress pointed an accusing finger at her. \"You cannot run away  like that,\" she said. \"I saw you. You're trying to go away without paying  the bill. I saw you.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e         For a moment Mma Ramotswe was unable to speak. The accusation was a  terrible one, and so unwarranted. Of course she had not been trying to get  away without paying the bill-she would never do such a thing; all she was  doing was trying to stop a crime being committed before her eyes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e         She recovered herself sufficiently to reply. \"I am not trying to go  away, Mma,\" she said. \"I am just trying to stop that person over there from  stealing from that man. Then I would have come back to pay.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e         The waitress smiled knowingly. \"They all find some excuse,\" she said.  \"Every day there are people like you. They come and eat our food and then  they run away and hide. You people are all the same.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e         Mma Ramotswe looked over towards the stall. The woman had begun to walk  away, presumably with the bangle still firmly in her pocket. It would now be  too late to do anything about it, and all because of this silly young woman  who had misunderstood what she was doing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e         She went back to her table and sat down. \"Bring me the bill,\" she said.  \"I will pay it straightaway.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e         The waitress stared at her. \"I will bring you the bill,\" she said. \"But  I shall have to add something for myself. I will have to add this if you do  not want me to call the police and tell them about how you tried to run  away.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e         As the waitress went off to fetch the bill, Mma Ramotswe glanced around  her to see if people at the neighbouring tables had witnessed the scene. At  the table next to hers, a woman sat with her two young children, who were  sipping with evident pleasure at large milkshakes. The woman smiled at Mma  Ramotswe, and then turned her attention back to the children. She had not  seen anything, thought Mma Ramotswe, but then the woman leaned across the  table and addressed a remark to her.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e         \"Bad luck, Mma,\" she said. \"They are too quick in this place. It is  easier to run away at the hotels.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e     \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    For a few minutes Mma Ramotswe sat in complete silence, reflecting on what  she had seen. It was remarkable. Within a very short space of time she had  seen an instance of bare-faced theft, had encountered a waitress who thought  nothing of extorting money, and then, to bring the whole matter to a  shameful conclusion, the woman at the next table had disclosed a thoroughly  dishonest view of the world. Mma Ramotswe was frankly astonished. She  thought of what her father, the late Obed Ramotswe, a fine judge of cattle  but also a man of the utmost propriety, would have thought of this. He had  brought her up to be scrupulously honest, and he would have been mortified  to see this sort of behaviour. Mma Ramotswe remembered how she had been  walking with him in Mochudi when she was a young girl and they had come  across a coin on the edge of the road. She had fallen upon it with delight  and was polishing it with her handkerchief before he noticed what had  happened and had intervened.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e         \"That is not ours,\" he said. \"That money belongs to somebody else.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e         She had yielded the coin reluctantly, and it had been handed in to a  surprised police sergeant at the Mochudi Police Post, but the lesson had  been a vivid one. It was difficult for Mma Ramotswe to imagine how anybody  could steal from another, or do any of the things which one read about in  the Botswana Daily News court reports. The only explanation was that people  who did that sort of thing had no understanding of what others felt; they  simply did not understand. If you knew what it was like to be another  person, then how could you possibly do something which would cause pain?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e         The problem, though, was that there seemed to be people in whom that  imaginative part was just missing. It could be that they were born that  way-with something missing from their brains-or it could be that they became  like that because they were never taught by their parents to sympathise with  others. That was the most likely explanation, thought Mma Ramotswe. A whole  generation of people, not only in Africa, but everywhere else, had not been  taught to feel for others because the parents simply had not bothered to  teach them this.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e         She continued to think of this as she drove in her tiny white van, back  through that part of town known as the Village, back past the University,  with its growing sprawl of buildings, and finally along Zebra Drive itself,  where she lived. She had been so disturbed by what she had seen that she had  quite forgotten to do the shopping that she had intended to do, with the  result that it was only when she pulled into her driveway and came to a halt  beside the kitchen wall that she remembered that she had none of the items  she needed to make that night's dinner. There were no beans, for example,  which meant that their stew would be accompanied by no greens; and there  would be no custard for the pudding which she had planned to make for the  children. She sat at the wheel of the van and contemplated retracing her  tracks to the shops, but she just did not have the energy. It was a hot day,  and the house looked cool and inviting. She could go inside, make herself a  pot of bush tea, and retire to her bedroom for a sleep. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni  and the children had gone out to Mojadite, a small village off the Lobatse  Road, to visit his aunt, and would not be back before six or seven. She  would have the house to herself for several hours yet, and this would be a  good time for a rest. There was plenty of food in the house-even if it was  the wrong sort for the dinner that she had planned. They could have pumpkin  with the stew, rather than beans, and the children would be perfectly happy  with a tin of peaches in syrup rather than the custard and semolina pudding  that she had thought of making. So there was no reason to go out again.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e         Mma Ramotswe stepped out of the tiny white van and walked round to the  kitchen door, unlocking it to let herself in. She could remember the days  when nobody locked their doors in Botswana, and indeed when there were many  doors that had no locks to lock anyway. But they had to lock their doors now  and there were even people who locked their gates too. She thought of what  she had seen only a short time before. That woman who had stolen from the  trader with the wide-brimmed felt hat; she lived in a room somewhere which  she no doubt kept locked, and yet she was prepared to steal from that poor  man. Mma Ramotswe sighed. There was much in this world over which one might  shake one's head. Indeed, it would be possible to go through life today with  one's head in constant motion, like a puppet in the hands of a shaky  puppeteer.","brand":"Anchor","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300731637989,"sku":"NP9781400075706","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400075706.jpg?v=1767729955","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/in-the-company-of-cheerful-ladies-isbn-9781400075706","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}