She became silent. Mma Ramotswe looked into her eyes. The whites were a strange colour, slightly ochre perhaps; burst blood vessels, perhaps, a long time ago; rust; the dust of many years. Any of these could be the explanation.

The old woman drew breath. “Fanwell is such a good boy” she said. “He works very hard in the garage, and do you know something, Mma? Every pay-day he gives me all the money he gets from Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. Every pula. That is how we live, Mma—all of us. It is only Fanwell's money that we have, and the few pula that I make from my pots. That is what keeps us, Mma. All of us.”

Mma Ramotswe sat quite still. All of us. Until you hear the whole story, until you dig deeper, and listen, she thought, you know only a tiny part of the goodness of the human heart.

CHAPTER SEVEN

PUSO MEETS ROPS THOBEGA,
BIG HERO

OF COURSE it was not good news that Mma Ramotswe received from Fanwell. But the next day was Saturday, and she put the whole matter out of her mind for the time being. The tiny white van was still working—just—and as long as she crawled along, the protests from the engine were not too loud. So she did not change her plans for that day, which, unusually for a Saturday, involved a work engagement, and a most unusual one at that.

The previous morning, Mma Ramotswe had received a telephone call from her new client, Mr. Leungo Molofololo.

“When are you going to start working on my case, Mma Ramotswe?” the businessman had asked.

“Very soon, Rra,” said Mma Ramotswe, glancing at Mma Makutsi as she spoke. The glance had a meaning for her assistant, who immediately inserted a piece of paper into her typewriter and began typing noisily.

“As you can probably hear, Rra,” she said, “the office is rather busy at the moment. But I shall start on your case as soon as I can.”

It was a genuine excuse; Mma Ramotswe had been busy, but she never expected clients to understand that. She knew how special each of us is to ourselves, and how inconceivable it is to us that somebody else's concerns should be more pressing than our own. And the richer people were, she had noticed, the more difficult it became for them to understand that there were other people with hopes and plans of their own, however small these might seem from the heights occupied by rich people. Perhaps to them we look like ants, thought Mma Ramotswe; and she imagined, for a moment, a rich person looking down and saying, That ant there, that traditionally built ant, is Mma Ramotswe. And that one scurrying around over there, that ant with big glasses, is Mma Makutsi.

Mr. Molofololo, though, proved not to be like that. He said that he understood that she was busy and that his matter would have to take its place in the queue. To which Mma Ramotswe replied, “It is a very small queue, Rra, and your case is near the top of the list now.”