This line of thought led to Professor Tlou. Mma Ramotswe was a great admirer of Professor Tlou, and she had read somewhere a reference to the fact that he had a chair of history. She knew that this was just a way of talking—that it simply meant that he was a professor of the history of Botswana—but she thought that it would be rather nice if the university were to give him an actual chair to go with the title. The chair of history, she felt, would have to be a very old chair, one of those chairs made out of dark hardwood with carved legs and an elaborate criss-cross seat of tightened animal-hide strips. It would be a very venerable chair, that chair, and quite unlike a chair of music, which would issue little musical squeaks when you sat in it, or which would make a sweet singing sound if it were left outside and the wind blew through it.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a nudge from Mma Makutsi.

“He's coming, Mma,” she hissed. “Look.”

Charlie walked jauntily out of the front door of the shop and made directly for the van. There was no room for him in the cab— he had travelled in the open section at the back—but they needed to talk to him now and so they both got out to greet him and led him to a shady place under the acacia.

“Well?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

Charlie rolled his eyes heavenwards. “She's quite a lady, that one! One, two, three!”

“Never mind all that, Charlie,” said Mma Makutsi impatiently. “What happened?”

“Give him time, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Tell us, Charlie, but take your time about it. Try to remember everything, please.”

Charlie enjoyed being the centre of attraction. “Well now,” he began. “I went into the store. That's quite a store, Mma Ramotswe! No wonder Mma Makutsi is happy to be engaged to that Phuti! Big store, Mma. Big store.”

Mma Ramotswe coaxed him on. “Yes, yes, Charlie. But what about the bed?”

Charlie smiled. “I found that lady you were talking about— that Violet lady. My, my! Pretty lady that one. Pretty lady! Anyway she comes up to me—like this, this is how she walks, see—and she says, You're looking for a bed, Rra? Yes? This is the right place. You've come to the best place in Botswana for beds. And so on.”

“And then?”

“And then she says, This bed here, Rra, is a very good bed for you, I think. Try it. She said that I should lie down on the bed and see whether it was comfortable. So I did that. And while I was lying down, she comes up beside me and says, You look very handsome there, Rra, lying on that bed—very handsome. So I sit up and she says, What do you think of that bed, Rra—isn't it the most comfortable bed you've ever tried? And then she says, I'm sure a handsome young man like you, Rra, has slept in many beds! And she laughed.”