“Perhaps people who have been wearing the same shoes for a long time would be able to find something suitable there,” she remarked casually.

Mma Ramotswe had looked at her. “You mean somebody like me?” she said.

Mma Makutsi had laughed to cover her embarrassment. “No, I was not just thinking of you. But maybe you would like to get yourself some new shoes. You can afford them.”

“But what’s wrong with the shoes I have?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “I have very wide feet. These are very wide shoes and they suit my feet. What would my feet say if I bought a thin pair of fashionable shoes? Surely they would think that something was wrong.”

Mma Makutsi decided to stand her ground. “But you can get wide shoes which look very good,” she said. “They have something for everybody.”

“I am very happy in these shoes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “They never give me any trouble.”

“You might buy some for Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, then,” suggested Mma Makutsi.

“And what is wrong with Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s shoes?”

Mma Makutsi was beginning to regret raising the subject. There was a great deal wrong with Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s shoes in her opinion. To begin with, they were covered in oil stains and she had seen the beginnings of a hole in the toe cap of one of them. Like Mma Ramotswe, he had a position in society as the proprietor of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, and shoes in good order were expected of such a person.

When Mma Makutsi did not provide an answer to her question, Mma Ramotswe went on to explain that new shoes would be wasted on Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “There is no point in buying men new shoes,” she said. “They are wasted on them. Men are not interested in shoes. That is very well known. If a man is always thinking about shoes, then there is something wrong with that man.”

“And what do men think about?” asked Mma Makutsi. “If they cannot think about shoes, what can they think about?”

Mma Ramotswe raised an eyebrow. “Men think about ladies a great deal of the time,” she said. “They think about ladies in a disrespectful way. That is because men are made that way, and there is nothing that can be done to change them. Then if they are not thinking about ladies, they are thinking about cattle and cars. And some men think a lot about football too. These are all things that men like to think about.”