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boys and must be ready to tell boys that they are Christians.
Some boys will not understand this …”
    Yes, thought
Precious Ramotswe. Some boys do not understand this, and even there, in that
Sunday School there was such a boy, that Josiah, who was a wicked boy, although
he was only nine. He insisted on sitting next to Precious in Sunday School,
even when she tried to avoid him. He was always looking at her and smiling
encouragingly, although she was two years older than he was. He tried also to
make sure that his leg touched hers, which angered her, and made her shift in
her seat, away from him.
    But worst of all, he would undo the buttons of
his trousers and point to that thing that boys have, and expect her to look.
She did not like this, as it was not something that should happen in a Sunday
School. What was so special about that, anyway? All boys had that thing.
    At last she told Mma Mothibi about it, and the teacher listened
gravely.
    “Boys, men,” she said. “They’re all
the same. They think that this thing is something special and they’re all
so proud of it. They do not know how ridiculous it is.”
    She told
Precious to tell her next time it happened. She just had to raise her hand a
little, and Mma Mothibi would see her. That would be the signal.
    It
happened the next week. While Mma Mothibi was at the back of the class, looking
at the Sunday School books which the children had laid out before them, Josiah
undid a button and whispered to Precious that she should look down. She kept
her eyes on her book and raised her left hand slightly. He could not see this,
of course, but Mma Mothibi did. She crept up behind the boy and raised her
Bible into the air. Then she brought it down on his head, with a resounding
thud that made the children start.
    Josiah buckled under the blow. Mma
Mothibi now came round to his front and pointed at his open fly. Then she
raised the Bible and struck him on the top of the head again, even harder than
before.
    That was the last time that Josiah bothered Precious Ramotswe,
or any other girl for that matter. For her part, Precious learned an important
lesson about how to deal with men, and this lesson stayed with her for many
years, and was to prove very useful later on, as were all the lessons of Sunday
School.
    The Cousin’
s Departure
    The
cousin looked after Precious for the first eight years of her life. She might
have stayed indefinitely—which would have suited Obed—as the cousin
kept house for him and never complained or asked him for money. But he
recognised, when the time came, that there might be issues of pride and that
the cousin might wish to marry again, in spite of what had happened last time.
So he readily gave his blessing when the cousin announced that she had been
seeing a man, that he had proposed, and that she had accepted.
    “I could take Precious with me,” she said. “I feel that
she is my daughter now. But then, there is you …”
    “Yes,” said Obed. “There is me. Would you take me
too?”
    The cousin laughed. “My new husband is a rich man,
but I think that he wants to marry only one person.”
    Obed made
arrangements for the wedding, as he was the cousin’s nearest relative and
it fell to him to do this. He did it readily, though, because of all she had
done for him. He arranged for the slaughter of two cattle and for the brewing
of enough beer for two hundred people. Then, with the cousin on his arm, he
entered the church and saw the new husband and his people, and other distant
cousins, and their friends, and people from the village, invited and uninvited,
waiting and watching.
    After the wedding ceremony, they went back to
the house, where canvas tarpaulins had been hooked up between thorn trees and
borrowed chairs set out. The old people sat down while the young moved about
and talked to one another, and sniffed the air at the great quantities of meat
that were sizzling on the open fires. Then they ate, and Obed made a speech of
thanks