Now no hands went up. Mr J. L. B. Matekoni looked around; honesty, it seemed, was beginning to prevail. And then he remembered: two weeks ago he had bought Mma Ramotswe a new plant for her garden. It was not a plant that she had asked for – it was a completely out-of-the-blue present.

Very slowly he raised his hand.

‘Ah!’ exclaimed Keitumeste. ‘What was this present, Rra?’

‘It was a plant,’ mumbled Mr J. L. B. Matekoni. ‘She is a very keen gardener and she likes to get plants.’

Keitumeste smiled broadly. ‘You see!’ she exclaimed. ‘You see what a truly modern, sympathetic husband does? He gives his wife a present of something that he knows she wants. He does not choose something that he would like to receive himself; he gets something for her.’

Mr J. L. B. Matekoni squirmed in his seat. If he had known that the course would involve this… this humiliation, then he would never have signed up for it. He looked at his watch. Ten minutes had passed. They had another half hour ahead of them. And it was a long half hour – one that moved with all the slowness of time spent in circumstances of social embarrassment.

At the end of it, in spite of Keitumeste’s offer to stay and answer any personal questions that the class might have, he slipped away quickly and returned at a fast pace – almost a run – to his truck. He was not made for courses of that sort, he thought. It might be a good thing to be a more modern husband but there were other ways, he felt, of reaching that desired goal – if indeed Mma Potokwani was right in her view that it was a desirable goal. There had been plenty of men in the past who had not been modern husbands, and their wives had seemed pleased enough with them. Perhaps women like Keitumeste should leave men alone for a while, rather than making them uneasy. And then he thought: what would it be like to be married to somebody like her? How unhappy that poor man must be; how uneasily he must sleep, if he slept at all. That was another thing: modern people always appeared to be rushing about doing things, having no time, it seemed, for looking at the sky, or counting the cattle they had already counted, or waiting for somebody to walk by and pass the time of day with them. They missed so much in all their anxiety and anger, and in their determination to stop other people doing things of which they happened to disapprove. Perhaps he should stay more or less as he was: Mr J. L. B. Matekoni, mechanic, not-very-good cook, but nonetheless devoted husband of Precious Ramotswe, the woman he loved and admired above all others and for whom he would do anything – anything at all – in his own not-very-modern way.