Precious and the Mystery of the Missing Lion: A New Case for Precious Ramotswe (9 page)

For a few moments Precious wondered whether he was going to try to swim out to see them. He looked at them, and he moved his head up and down a bit as if he were greeting them. Then he let out a
little roar. It was not an unfriendly roar; it was more of a
hello, how are you?
roar rather than a
stay away from me!
roar.

Tom raised a hand to wave to Teddy. The lion and the man looked at each other for quite a few minutes, as if they were both remembering all the time they had spent together. Then, rather sadly,
in the way in which you would leave a good friend, Teddy turned round and began to walk back to the new life he had found for himself.

That was the last night that Precious was to spend with her aunt. The following day, she was to go back home with the people who had brought her up in their truck. She was sad to be leaving
Aunty Bee, but she had plenty of friends back home to whom she was looking forward to telling the story of her adventures. Khumo was sorry to see her go, but he promised to write to her and said
that he hoped one day he would see her again. He knew that she was already a detective and that she would become an even better detective as the years went by.

“Perhaps you’ll teach me how to be your assistant,” he said. “Only if you’ve got the time, of course.”

“Perhaps,” said Precious.

That night, asleep on the floor of her aunt’s room, with the sounds of the African night coming in through the window, she dreamed that she was out in the bush. In this dream she was
walking along a path when she suddenly came upon a lion, and this was a lion called Teddy. And he smiled at her, in a curious, lion-like way before he ambled off back into the grass. It was not
long grass, and she could see him quite well in the dream as he bounded off into the distance.

“Goodbye!” she whispered under her breath.

And he half-turned his head, and looked back at her, and said something that she did not quite catch. She did not know what it was, but she did know that it was something happy.