They left the shop having identified and priced a pressure cooker. “We shall find another shop that sells those cookers,” said Mma Ramotswe, “and then we shall compare their prices. It is not good to waste money. Seretse Khama himself said that, you know. He said that we should not waste money.”

Mma Makutsi was non-committal. Mma Ramotswe had a habit of quoting Seretse Khama on a wide range of subjects, and she was not at all sure whether her employer was always strictly accurate in this. She had once asked Mma Ramotswe to supply chapter and verse for a particular quotation and had been fobbed off with a challenge. “Do you think I invent his words?” Mma Ramotswe had asked indignantly. “Just because people are beginning to forget what he said, that doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten.”

Mma Makutsi had left it at that, and now said very little when the late President was quoted. It was a harmless enough habit, she thought, and if it helped to keep alive the memory of that great man, then it was, all in all, a good thing. But she wished that Mma Ramotswe would be a little bit more historically accurate; just a bit. The problem was that she had not been to the Botswana Secretarial College, where the motto, proudly displayed above the front entrance to the college, was Be Accurate. Unfortunately, there was a spelling mistake, and the motto read Be Acurate. Mma Makutsi had spotted this and had pointed it out to the college, but nothing had been done about it so far.