“Please do not shout at each other,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Shouting achieves nothing. It just makes the person doing the shouting hoarse and the person being shouted at cross. That is all it does.”

“I was not shouting,” said Charlie. “Somebody else was doing the shouting. Somebody with big round glasses. Not me.”

Mma Ramotswe sighed. It was Mma Makutsi’s fault, this feeling between the two of them. She was older than Charlie and might have turned a blind eye to the young man’s faults; she might have encouraged him to be a bit better than he was; she might have understood that young men are like this and that one has to be tolerant.

“Tell me about this business, Charlie,” she said gently. “What is it?”

Charlie sat down on the chair in front of Mma Ramotswe. Then he leaned forward, his arms resting on the surface of her desk. “Mr J.L.B. Matekoni has sold me a car,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper, so that Mma Makutsi might not hear. “It is an old Mercedes-Benz. An E220. The owner has a new one, a C-Class, and since this one has such a large mileage on it he sold it to the boss for very little. Twenty thousand pula. Now the boss has sold it to me.”

“And?” coaxed Mma Ramotswe. She had seen the Mercedes in the garage and had noticed that it had been parked at the side of the building for over two weeks. She assumed that they were waiting for some part that had been ordered from South Africa. Now she knew that there were other plans for the car.

“And I am going to start a taxi service,” said Charlie. “I am going to start a business called the No. 1 Ladies’ Taxi Service.”

There was a gasp from the other side of the room. “You can’t do that! That name belongs to Mma Ramotswe.”

Mma Ramotswe, taken aback, simply stared at Charlie. Then she gathered her thoughts. The name that he had chosen was certainly derivative, but was there anything wrong with that? In one view, it was a compliment to have a name one had invented being used by somebody else. The only difficulty would be if the name were to be used by a similar business—by a detective agency that wanted to take clients away from them. A taxi company and a detective agency were two very different things, and there would be no prospect of competition between them.

“I don’t mind,” she said to Charlie. “But tell me: Why have you chosen that name? You’ll be driving the car—where do the ladies come into it?”

Charlie, who had been tense under Mma Makutsi’s onslaught, now visibly relaxed. “The ladies will be in the back of the car.”

Mma Ramotswe raised an eyebrow. “And?”