Motholeli glanced conspiratorially at her friend, and then looked back at Mma Ramotswe. “This is my friend,” she said. “She is called Alice.”

Mma Ramotswe looked at the other girl, who rose to her feet politely and lowered her head. The greetings exchanged, the visitor sat down.

“Have you done your homework, Motholeli?” Mma Ramotswe asked.

The girl replied that it was completely finished; it had been easy she said; so simple that even Puso could have done it, and he was several years younger.

“The reason why our homework is so simple today,” Alice explained, “is that the teacher who gave it to us is not very intelligent. She can only mark simple homework.”

This observation set the two girls giggling again, and Mma Ramotswe had to bite her lip to prevent herself from giggling too. But she could not join in the girls' mirth at the expense of a teacher. Teachers had to be respected-as they always had been in Botswana -and if children thought them stupid, then that would hardly encourage respect.

“I do not think that this teacher can be like that,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Teachers have to pass examinations. They are very well-educated.”

“Not this one,” said Motholeli, setting the two children off in paroxysms of laughter.

Mma Ramotswe gave up. There was no point in trying to stop teenage girls from giggling; that was the way they were. One might as well try to stop men liking football. The analogy made her stop and think. Football. Tomorrow morning, if she remembered correctly, Mr. Leungo Molofololo had arranged to come to see her at ten o'clock. Mma Ramotswe was used to receiving well-known people, but Mr. Molofololo, by any standards, would be an important client. Not only did he have a large house up at Phulukane-a house which must have cost many millions of pula to build-but he had the ear of virtually every influential person in the country. Mr. Molofololo controlled the country's best football team, and that, in the world of men, counted for more than anything else.