He wondered whether Mr. Botumile had been aware of his wife’s irascible nature before he had asked her to marry him. If he had ever proposed marriage; it may well have been the other way round. Sometimes men cannot remember the circumstances in which they asked their wives to marry them, for the very good reason that no identifiable proposal was ever made. These are the men, thought Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, who are trapped into matrimony, who drift into it, who are eventually cornered by feminine wiles and find that a date has been set. In his own case he remembered very well the circumstances in which he had asked Mma Ramotswe to be his wife, but the memory of the way in which the day was actually selected was very much hazier. He had been at the orphan farm, he believed, and Mma Potokwane had said something about how important it was for a woman to know when a wedding would be—something like that—and then the next thing he knew was that he was standing under that big tree and Trevor Mwamba was conducting the wedding service.

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, of course, was very content being the husband of Mma Ramotswe, and he would never conceive of a situation in which he would be unhappy with her. But how different it must be—and what a nightmare—to discover that the person whom one has married is somebody one just does not like. People did make such a discovery, sometimes only a week or two into the marriage, and it must be a bleak one. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni knew that you were supposed to make an effort with your marriage, that you should at least try to get on with your spouse, but what if you found that she was somebody like Mma Botumile? He shuddered at the thought. Poor Mr. Botumile having to listen to that shrill, complaining voice every day, no doubt running him down, criticising his every move, his every remark, making a prison for him, a prison of put-downs and belittlements. There but for the grace of God, he thought, go I. This feeling for Mr. Botumile, this sympathy, was the only drawback in the way he felt about the whole enquiry. And even then, in spite of his understanding of Mr. Botumile’s plight, he was proud of the fact that he had been able to be so professional about the whole matter. He had sympathised with the husband in this case, but he had not let it obscure the fact that he was working for the wife.