For a moment Mma Ramotswe was undecided. Do I really want to change the way I am? she asked herself. Or should I just be myself, which is a traditionally built lady who likes bush tea and who likes to sit on her verandah and think?

  She sighed. There were many good intentions which would never be seen to their implementation. This, she decided, was one of them.

  “I think my diet is over now,” she said to Mma Potokwane.

  They sat there for some time, talking in the way of old friends, licking the crumbs of cake off their fingers. Mma Ramotswe told Mma Potokwane about her stressful week, and Mma Potokwane sympathised with her. “You must take more care of yourself,” she said. “We are not born to work, work, work all the time.”

  “You’re right,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is important just to be able to sit and think.”

  Mma Potokwane agreed with that. “I often tell the orphans not to spend all their time working,” she said. “It is quite unnatural to work like that. There should be some time for work and some for play.”

  “And some for sitting and watching the sun go up and down,” said Mma Ramotswe. “And some time for listening to the cattle bells in the bush.”

  Mma Potokwane thought that this was a fine sentiment. She too, she said, would like to retire one day and go and live out in her village, where people knew one another and cared for one another.

  “Will you go back to your village one day?” she asked Mma Ramotswe. And Mma Ramotswe replied, “I shall go back. Yes, one of these days I shall go back.”

  And in her mind’s eye she saw the winding paths of Mochudi, and the cattle pens, and the small walled-off plot of ground where a modest stone bore the inscription Obed Ramotswe. And beside the stone there were wild flowers growing, small flowers of such beauty and perfection that they broke the heart. They broke the heart.

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the huge international phenomemon The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, and of The Sunday Philosophy Club and 44 Scotland Street series. He was born in what is now known as Zimbabwe and was a law professor at the University of Botswana and at Edinburgh University. He lives in Scotland.

  BOOKS BY

  ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH

  IN THE NO. 1 LADIES’ DETECTIVE AGENCY SERIES

  The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

  Tears of the Giraffe

  Morality for Beautiful Girls

  The Kalahari Typing School for Men

  The Full Cupboard of Life

  In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

  Blue Shoes and Happiness

  IN THE SUNDAY PHILOSOPHY CLUB SERIES

  The Sunday Philosophy Club

  Friends, Lovers, Chocolate

  IN THE PORTUGUESE IRREGULAR VERBS SERIES

  Portuguese Irregular Verbs

  The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs

  At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances

  IN THE 44 SCOTLAND STREET SERIES

  44 Scotland Street

  The Girl Who Married a Lion and Other Tales from Africa

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2006 by Alexander McCall Smith

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Great Britain by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn, Ltd., Edinburgh.

  Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  McCall Smith, Alexander, [date]

  Blue shoes and happiness / Alexander McCall Smith.

  p. cm.—(The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series)

  1. Ramotswe, Precious (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (Imaginary organization)—Fiction. 3. Women private investigators—Botswana—Fiction. 4. Botswana—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6063.C326B58 2006 823'.914—dc22 2005052122

  www.pantheonbooks.com

  eISBN: 978-0-375-42426-7

  v3.0

 


 

  Alexander McCall Smith, Blue Shoes and Happiness

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