Tears of the Giraffe
Chapter One
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni's House
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, proprietor of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, found
it difficult to believe that Mma Ramotswe, the accomplished founder
of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, had agreed to marry him. It
was at the second time of asking; the first posing of the question,
which had required immense courage on his part, had brought forth a
refusal-gentle, and regretful-but a refusal nonetheless. After
that, he had assumed that Mma Ramotswe would never remarry; that her
brief and disastrous marriage to Note Mokoti, trumpeter and jazz
aficionado, had persuaded her that marriage was nothing but a recipe
for sorrow and suffering. After all, she was an independent-minded
woman, with a business to run, and a comfortable house of her own in
Zebra Drive. Why, he wondered, should a woman like that take on a
man, when a man could prove to be difficult to manage once vows were
exchanged and he had settled himself in her house? No, if he were in
Mma Ramotswe's shoes, then he might well decline an offer of
marriage, even from somebody as eminently reasonable and respectable
as himself.
But the ... read full excerpt from Tears of the Giraffe ebook
