Clovis Andersen must be a most sympathetic man, Mma Ramotswe thought; more like a woman, in many ways, with his advice to study people’s clothing carefully. (There are many clues in what people wear, he wrote. Our clothes reveal a great deal about us. They talk. A man who wears no tie does not dress that way because he has no tie-he probably has an appreciable number of ties in his wardrobe at home-he is wearing no tie because he has chosen to do so. That means that he wishes to appear casual.) Mma Ramotswe had found that a puzzling passage and had wondered where it was leading. She was not sure what one could deduce from the fact that a man wished to appear casual, but she was sure that, like all the observations of Clovis Andersen, this was in some way important.

She looked up from her desk and glanced at Mma Makutsi, who was busying herself with the typing of a letter which Mma Ramotswe had drafted, in pencil, earlier on. We must try to help her, she thought. We must try to persuade her to value herself more than she does at present. She was a fine woman, with great talents, and it was absurd that she should go through life thinking less of herself because she had no husband. That was such a waste. Mma Makutsi deserved to be happy. She deserved to have something to look forward to other than a bleak existence in one room in Old Naledi; a room that she shared with her sick brother, and into which no light came. Everybody deserved more than that, even in this unlucky world, a world which had brought such rewards to Mma Ramotswe but which seemed to be grudging in its appreciation of Mma Makutsi. We shall change all that, thought Mma Ramotswe, because it is possible to change the world, if one is determined enough, and if one sees with sufficient clarity just what it is that has to be changed.

CHAPTER TWO

LEARN TO DRIVE WITH JESUS