Mma Ramotswe held up a hand. She was not interested now in Mma Makutsi’s struggles with her conscience. What she was interested in was finding out exactly where the glasses had been found. And the answer, when it came, confirmed what she had been thinking.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

HE LOVED HIS CATTLE. HE LOVED HIS COUNTRY

TWO DAYS AFTER Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had left for Johannesburg with Motholeli, he telephoned Mma Ramotswe and told her at length about the trip and about their accommodation in a small hotel on the outskirts of the city. It was the second time that he had stayed in a hotel; for Motholeli it was the first. Both were excited.

“There is a very big bath in the bathroom,” Motholeli told Mma Ramotswe. “And in the morning you can help yourself to as many eggs and as much bacon as you like. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni has been eating a lot.”

“Not that much,” she heard her husband saying in the background.

“And the doctors?” she asked.

“They are very kind,” said Motholeli.

Mma Ramotswe waited for something else to be said about the treatment, but neither Motholeli nor Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was forthcoming on the subject. “They are doing a lot of things,” he said. “I am not there, though, and so I cannot say what it is that they are doing.”

There was time enough to ponder this, and she did; rather too much, perhaps, as she found that anxiety over what was happening began to gnaw away at her. Now she started to reproach herself for not being firmer, for failing to veto a trip which she saw as pointless and even counter-productive. Motholeli had handled her disability with remarkable maturity and dignity; was it right, Mma Ramotswe wondered, that she should be encouraged to think that something could be done when it so obviously could not? Of course it would have been difficult to oppose the whole thing, for Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni tended to hold on to an idea once he became attached to it. If she had refused to allow Motholeli to go to Johannesburg, then he could have ended up resenting her. So perhaps it was the right decision after all. On the other hand…

She had not asked how the trip and the treatment were to be paid for, and she might never have found out had Mma Makutsi not taken it upon herself during Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s absence to open the mail addressed to Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. This was hardly voluminous: a few envelopes containing cheques for work done, a letter or two from suppliers of parts, advertisements for batteries—and a letter from the bank.