Mma Ramotswe sighed. There was a limit to the extent to which you could fight the battles of children. Down among the children, in the jungle they inhabited, the word of adults could count for very little. An adult’s reprimand, or punishment, might get a wrongdoer’s attention, but would not necessarily change attitudes, which would revert to their natural state the moment the adult disappeared. No, Motholeli was right: it might not help to take it up with the authorities.

“Well, you think about what I have told you,” Mma Ramotswe said. “And here’s something you can remember. It’s a thing you can say to a person like Kagiso. ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.’ You remember that.”

Motholeli muttered something.

“What was that?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

“I was practising it, Mma. ‘Sticks and stones may …’ ”

“May break my bones,” prompted Mma Ramotswe. “But words will never hurt me.”

Watching the child’s reaction, her solemn contemplation of what had been said, Mma Ramotswe felt some satisfaction that she seemed to be getting through to her. That was the beauty, she thought, of those little sayings, those proverbs that children could learn and use to help them through life. That one came from somewhere else—she had read about it when she was a child herself—but there were plenty of old Botswana sayings that did the same thing, that gave you little rules for getting through life, for coping with its disappointments and sorrows. And did it matter, she wondered, whether they were true or not? Words could hurt you, and hurt you every bit as badly as sticks and stones. So that saying was wrong; but that was not the point. The point was that if it made you better, made you braver, then it was doing its work. The same thing was true, Mma Ramotswe thought, of believing in God. There were plenty of people who did not really believe in God, but who wanted to believe in him, and said that they did. Some people said that these people were foolish, that they were hypocritical, but Mma Ramotswe was not so sure about that. If something, or somebody, could help you to get through life, to lead a life that was good and purposeful, did it matter all that much if that thing or that person did not exist? She thought it did not—not in the slightest bit.