But it would be nothing to the happiness of Andrea Curtin, who arrived three days later and who met, late that afternoon, in the office of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, the mother of her grandson and her grandson himself. While Carla was left alone to give the account of what happened on that night ten years ago, Mma Ramotswe took the boy for a walk, and pointed out to him the granite slopes of Kgale Hill and the distant smudge of blue which was the waters of the dam. He was a courteous boy, rather grave in his manner, who was interested in stones, and kept stopping to scratch at some piece of rock or to pick up a pebble.

“This one is quartz,” he said, showing her a piece of white rock. “Sometimes you find gold in quartz.”

She took the rock and examined it. “You are very interested in rocks?”

“I want to be a geologist,” he said solemnly. “We have a geologist who stays in our hotel sometimes. He teaches me about rocks.”

She smiled encouragingly. “It would be an interesting job, that,” she said. “Rather like being a detective. Looking for things.”

She handed the piece of quartz back to him. As he took it, his eye caught her engagement ring, and for a moment he held her hand, looking at the gold band and its twinkling stone.

“Cubic zirconium,” he said. “They make them look like diamonds. Just like the real thing.”

WHEN THEY returned, Carla and the American woman were sitting side by side and there was a peacefulness, even joy, in the older woman’s expression which told Mma Ramotswe that what she had intended had indeed been achieved.

They drank tea together, just looking at one another. The boy had a gift for his grandmother, a small soapstone carving, which he had made himself. She took it, and kissed him, as any grandmother would.

Mma Ramotswe had a gift for the American woman, a basket which on her return journey from Bulawayo she had bought, on impulse, from a woman sitting by the side of the road in Francistown. The woman was desperate, and Mma Ramotswe, who did not need a basket, had bought it to help her. It was a traditional Botswana basket, with a design worked into the weaving.

“These little marks here are tears,” she said. “The giraffe gives its tears to the women and they weave them into the basket.”

The American woman took the basket politely, in the proper Botswana way of receiving a gift—with both hands. How rude were people who took a gift with one hand, as if snatching it from the donor; she knew better.

“You are very kind, Mma,” she said. “But why did the giraffe give its tears?”