“They are staying in your house?” she said. “This is a new development. Have they just come?”

He nodded bleakly. “Yesterday,” he said.

Mma Ramotswe looked down at the children and then back at Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.

“I think that we should have a talk,” she said. “You children stay here for a moment. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni and I are going to the post office.”

There was no escape. Head hanging, like a schoolboy caught in delinquency, he followed Mma Ramotswe to the corner of the post office, where before the stacked rows of private postal boxes, he faced the judgement and sentence that he knew were his lot. She would divorce him—if that was the correct term for the breakup of an engagement. He had lost her because of his dishonesty and stupidity—and it was all Mma Silvia Potokwane’s fault. Women like that were always interfering in the lives of others, forcing them to do things; and then matters went badly astray and lives were ruined in the process.

Mma Ramotswe put down her basket of letters.

“Why did you not tell me about these children?” she asked. “What have you done?”

He hardly dared meet her gaze. “I was going to tell you,” he said. “I was out at the orphan farm yesterday. The pump was playing up. It’s so old. Then their minibus needs new brakes. I have tried to fix those brakes, but they are always giving problems. We shall have to try and find new parts, I have told them that, but …”

“Yes, yes,” pressed Mma Ramotswe. “You have told me about those brakes before. But what about these children?”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni sighed. “Mma Potokwane is a very strong woman. She told me that I should take some foster children. I did not mean to do it without talking to you, but she would not listen to me. She brought in the children and I really had no alternative. It was very hard for me.”

He stopped. A man passed on his way to his postal box, fumbling in his pocket for his key, muttering something to himself. Mma Ramotswe glanced at the man and then looked back at Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.

“So,” she said, “you agreed to take these children. And now they think that they are going to stay.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” he mumbled.

“And how long for?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni took a deep breath. “For as long as they need a home,” he said. “Yes, I offered them that.”