Riding in the cart, on a battered old red-leather seat saved from a car somewhere, was an elderly man. At the end of the reins he held were two donkeys, yoked side by side, pulling the cart with that somnolent acceptance—resignation, even—that marks their breed. Their steps, taken on small black hooves, were sure enough, but slow; they would be faster on the return journey, with the smell of home in their nostrils, but for the moment there was no rush.

Mma Ramotswe stepped out onto the track and raised her hand in greeting. The man riding the cart pulled on the reins, took off his hat and wiped his brow. She caught her breath: the hat was so like the hat that her father, the late Obed Ramotswe, had worn every day of his life after he had returned from Mochudi—or so it had seemed to her. The hat that they had tucked into his coffin to accompany him on that final journey to the grave; the hat that he had once lost on the road and that had been rescued by some stranger and placed on a wall where its owner might see it; that same shapeless hat that she had felt embarrassed about as a small girl, other girls’ fathers having more modern hats, but that she had come to love as standing for everything that he, and indeed Botswana, stood for—decency, quiet, courtesy—the things that were slipping away in the world but that were remembered and pined for.

The man replaced his hat, tied up the reins of the cart, and got down from his seat.

“I think you’re stuck, Mma,” he said to Mma Ramotswe. “This bit of sand is well known for this. Every time anybody comes along here they find that this sand wants them to stay and talk.”

Mma Ramotswe laughed. “Maybe it is lonely, Rra.”

The man nodded. “That could be, Mma. But maybe it is just thinking that it will remind people that four-wheel-drive trucks are the only way to travel out here—four-wheeled or …,” and here he pointed to the donkeys, which were eyeing Mma Ramotswe lugubriously, “four-legged.”

Mma Ramotswe accepted the implicit censure graciously. “You’re right, Rra. My husband would agree with you. But my friend over here and I were very anxious to see Mma Potokwane, and we came anyway. Now I have plenty of time to regret it.”

“We always have plenty of time to regret things,” said the man. “I have been regretting everything for years and years.”

Mma Makutsi, who had been standing to the side, now came forward and introduced herself. “I am this lady’s assistant … associate. Could you help us, Rra? Soon it will be dark and—”

“My friend here is worried about lions,” interjected Mma Ramotswe.