WHILE MMA MAKUTSI and Phuti Radiphuti were reflecting on their good fortune, Mma Ramotswe and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, who themselves had on many occasions pondered their own good luck, were engaged in a conversation of an entirely different nature. They had finished their dinner and the children had been dispatched to bed. Both were tired—he because he had removed an entire engine that afternoon, a task which involved considerable physical exertion, and she because she had awoken the night before and lost an hour or two of sleep. The kitchen clock, which always ran ten minutes fast, revealed that it was eight thirty, eight twenty after adjustment. One could not decently go to bed before eight thirty, Mma Ramotswe felt; and so she sat back and chatted with her husband about the day’s events. She was not particularly interested in the removal of the engine, and listened to his comments on that with only half an ear. But then he said something which engaged her full attention.

“That woman I spoke to,” he said. “Mma What’s-her-name. The one with the husband.”

“Mma Botumile.” Mma Ramotswe’s tone was cautious.

“Yes, her,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “I thought that maybe…that maybe because I spoke to her first…” He trailed off. Mma Ramotswe was staring at him, and he felt disconcerted.

Mma Ramotswe thought for a while before she said anything. It was important that she should handle this carefully. “Do you want to be involved?” she asked.

“I already am,” he said.

She hesitated. “In a way.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni now became more confident. “Being a mechanic is fine,” he said. “But it is always the same thing. A car comes in, I listen to what the engine has to say, I make my diagnosis, and then I fix it. That is what I do.”

There was nothing wrong with that, thought Mma Ramotswe. Being a mechanic was a great calling, in her view, and was certainly more useful than many of the white-collar jobs that seemed to carry all the prestige. A country could never have too many mechanics, but it could have too many of the civil servants who wrote complicated and obscure letters to Mma Ramotswe about her tax payments and about various forms and returns that they thought she should fill in.