Mr Polopetsi nodded. “I did think that, Rra. And it is all right with me. I cannot expect you to give a job to everyone.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni laughed. “But I never thought that you should go, Rra. I should have told you. I never thought that you should go. What is going to happen to this place once those boys finish their apprenticeship—if they ever finish it? Where would I be then if I did not have somebody like you to help me? And now you have heard what Mma Ramotswe says about your doing some work for her from time to time. You are going to be a very busy man, Rra.”

THAT AFTERNOON, just as Mma Ramotswe was on the point of suggesting that they close the agency an hour earlier than normal, as she needed to go to the butcher to collect some meat for that evening’s meal, Mr Polopetsi came into the office to announce that there was a man who was asking to see her. He was an elderly man, he said, who had arrived in a car driven by a driver, and he did not wish to come inside. Could Mma Ramotswe speak to him outside, under the tree?

Mma Ramotswe smiled. This was what an elderly person, a traditional person, might feel comfortable doing: talking under a tree, as people had always done. She went outside, and saw that her visitor was already standing under the tree, his hat in his hand. He looked so like her father, she thought, with a pang of regret; he had enjoyed talking to people while standing or sitting under a tree, watching the cattle grazing, or simply looking at the sky and the hills of the country that he had loved so much.

“Dumela, Mma Ramotswe, you remember me, do you not?”

She reached forward and they shook hands.

“I remember you well, Rra. You were a friend of my father. I have not seen you for a long time, but of course I remember you. You are well, Rra?”

He tapped his head lightly with a forefinger. “My head is getting very old now,” he said, smiling as he spoke. “And that means that I forget many things. But I have not forgotten Obed Ramotswe. We were boys together. You do not forget that.”

She nodded. “You were his good friend,” she said.

“And he was a good man, your father.”

There was a silence. She wondered whether she should invite him into the office for tea, but decided that this was not what he wanted. But what then did he want? Sometimes old people just liked to talk about the past, that was all, and perhaps that was why he had come to see her.