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All of these things could very easily be dealt with by one of the three assistant managers, and letting them deal with problems rather than sorting it out himself was not only less stressful for Phuti, but was also a way of encouraging staff. If you were an assistant manager, then what you really wanted was the chance to manage, and if the real manager was around, you might feel inhibited from managing. By arriving late, he felt, the assistant managers would have an hour or so during which they could manage. Of course there were limits to this approach: if it were left to assistant managers, they would suggest that you arrive late in the afternoon, or even not at all, thus giving them all day to give orders and make decisions, leaving nothing for you to manage or decide yourself.
    So it was because of all this that Phuti’s day ran rather later than everybody else’s. And that meant that Mma Makutsi had more time to attend to the needs of their son, Itumelang Clovis Radiphuti, who was now six months old and not inclined to go to sleep until at least eight in the evening. The three or four hours that Mma Makutsi now spent with him after she returned from work in the late afternoon was, she felt, the most valuable time in her day—and his too. The woman whom they had engaged as nurse to Itumelang was completely trustworthy and had exceeded their expectations in every respect, but Mma Makutsi believed, as did most people, that there was no substitute for the attention of a mother. And Itumelang himself seemed to share this view, as his expression always became one of complete delight when he saw his mother come home at the end of the working day. And when she picked him up and held him to her, he would make a strange gurgling sound—a sound of unconcealed pleasure that Mma Ramotswe, when she witnessed it one day, had described as being like the purring of a cat.
    â€œYou can tell that he is happy,” she said to Mma Makutsi. “Listen. That is the noise that a cat makes when it has been fed and is happy with the world. He is purring, Mma. You have the only purring baby in Botswana.”
    â€œI am very happy that he purrs,” said Mma Makutsi. “Maybe that means he’s a little lion. When he grows up he will be brave and strong—like a lion.”
    Mma Ramotswe had laughed, but the comment had triggered a memory that came back to her now, none the less vivid for not having been thought about for years—since childhood, in fact. She closed her eyes for a moment, as if to fix the recollection in her mind before it vanished, as old thoughts can so easily do. For a few moments she was back in Mochudi, still a girl, sitting with her father’s cousin, who had helped bring her up, and the cousin had told her a story that sheherself must have learned from her grandmother or an aunt or somebody of the generation that still stored all these traditional stories in some corner of their minds.
    â€œA lion,” muttered Mma Ramotswe. “There was a story about that.”
    Mma Makutsi planted a kiss on Itumelang’s brow. “About a boy who was as brave as a lion? Like my Itumelang?”
    Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “I was told it a long time ago by my daddy’s cousin. She was the one who helped him when I was a girl.”
    Mma Makutsi inclined her head respectfully. She knew about Mma Ramotswe’s early years. “After your mother became late?”
    â€œYes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “The cousin was older than my late daddy. She was like a grandmother to me.”
    â€œThey are the ones for stories,” said Mma Makutsi. “They know all those stories about things that happened a long time ago—or did not happen.”
    â€œIt doesn’t matter if they did not happen,” said Mma Ramotswe. “There are many stories about things that did not happen.” She paused. “This one was about a girl who married a lion. She did not know it