He looked up at her. “And so are you,” he replied.

“Yes,” she said. “We are both quiet.”

She sat down beside him, balancing her tea cup on her knee. As she did so, she glanced at Mr J.L.B. Matekoni; the thought had occurred to her that he might be feeling depressed—and that was an alarming prospect—but she quickly discounted this. He had behaved very differently when he had been depressed, acting in a listless, vague way. Now, by contrast, he was very obviously thinking of one particular thing.

She looked out into the garden, and the night. It was warm and the moon was almost full, throwing shadows of the acacia, of the mopipi tree, of shrubs that had no name. Mma Ramotswe liked to walk in her garden in the evening, taking care to move slowly and with firm tread; those who crept about at night risked stepping on a snake if they were not careful, as snakes move out of our way only if they feel vibrations in the ground. A light person—a person of non-traditional build, for example—was at far greater risk of being bitten by a snake for that very reason. That was another argument, of course, for maintaining traditional build—consideration for snakes, and safety too.

Mma Ramotswe was well aware of the difficulties now faced by traditionally built people, particularly by traditionally built ladies. There was a time in Botswana when nobody paid much attention to thin people—indeed thin people might sometimes simply not be seen at all, as they could so easily be looked past. If a thin person stood against a background of acacia trees and grass, then might he not either merge into the background or be thought to be a stick or even a shadow? This was never a danger with a traditionally built person; such a person would stand in the landscape with the same prominence and authority as a baobab tree.