Mme Ngweand Mme Pedi were Refiloe’saunts. But even though they were sisters and lived right next door to each other, they did not like each other at all.

Mme Ngwewas a short woman, and very fond of a bite to eat. She had many, many chins that rolled down her neck all the way into the front of her seshoeshoedresses.

Her seshoeshoedresses were always just a little bit too tight, so she had to hold her breath as she walked in case she should split a seam while shopping. She held her breath so tight that she could not open her mouth to greet anyone.

When she wasn’t holding her breath or shopping, there was nothing she liked better than sitting in the sun chatting and talking behind her hand about so-and-so and such-and-such in the village.

‘You are truly a greedy woman, Mme Ngwe,’ Mme Pedi would say, ‘and I wish I had nothing to do with you. You have no idea how to behave; you eat far too much and do far too little. You are a lazy fat gossip!’

Mme Pedi herself got up at four o’clock every morning and did not go to bed until she had cleaned every room at least twice, and made at least three dishes of food.
But she hardly ever ate anything.

The only reason she did stop every now and then was for a pinch of the finest Mafetengsnuff, and she always kept a little tin of it in her pocket.

‘Well you haven’t got anything to shout about,’ said MmeNgwein reply, ‘you are a skinny little stick insect that can’t even eat those cakes and fat chickens and lekoenyayou are forever cooking. You jump about here and there like a silly goat. And as for putting that snuff up your nose every five minutes, you must be quite mad!’

The aunts had been preparing for months for Palesa’swedding.

But when the time came to leave for Malealeafor Palesa’swedding, they would not even think about riding together in the same taxi.

‘I’m not going in your taxi, ‘said MmePedi to MmeNgwe, ‘you are so fat that even if you manage to squeeze into it, the taxi will overturn before it gets to Motsekuoa.’

‘Suit yourself you scrawny hen, the taxi will go straight past you standing on the side of the road, you look exactly like a mieliestalk,’ replied MmeNgwe.