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spoke. There was something wrong; she had been right.
    “Are things busy at the garage?” she asked.
    He shrugged his shoulders. “Things are always busy at the garage. All the time. People keep bringing their cars in and saying Do this, do that. They think I have ten pairs of hands. That’s what they think.”
    “But do you not expect people to bring their cars to the garage?” she asked gently. “Is that not what a garage is for?”
    Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked at her briefly and then shrugged. “Maybe. But there is still too much work.”
    Mma Ramotswe glanced about the room, noticing the pile of newspapers on the floor and the small stack of what looked like unopened letters on the table.
    “I went to the garage,” she said. “I expected to see you there, but they said that you had left early. They said you often left early these days.”
    Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked at her, and then transferred his gaze to the floor. “I find it hard to stay there all day, with all that work,” he said. “It will get done sooner or later. There are those two boys. They can do it.”
    Mma Ramotswe gasped. “Those two boys? Those apprentices of yours? But they are the very ones you always said could do nothing. How can you say now that they will do everything that needs to be done? How can you say that?”
    Mr J.L.B. Matekoni did not reply.
    “Well, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni?” pressed Mma Ramotswe. “What’s your answer to that?”
    “They’ll be all right,” he said, in a curious, flat voice. “Let them get on with it.”
    Mma Ramotswe stood up. There was no point talking to him when he was in this sort of mood—and it certainly was a mood that he seemed to be in. Perhaps he was ill. She had heard that a bout of flu could leave one feeling lethargic for a week or two; perhaps that was the simple explanation of this out-of-character behaviour. In which case, she would just have to wait until he came out of it.
    “I’ve spoken to Mma Makutsi,” she said as she prepared to leave. “I think that she can start at the garage sometime in the next few days. I have given her the title of Assistant Manager. I hope that you don’t mind.”
    His reply astonished her.
    “Assistant Manager, Manager, Managing Director, Minister of Garages,” he said. “Whatever you like. It makes no difference, does it?”
    Mma Ramotswe could not think of a suitable reply, so she said goodbye and started to walk out of the door.
    “Oh, by the way,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni as she started to leave the house, “I thought that I might go out to the lands for a little while. I want to see how the planting is going. I might stay out there for a while.”
    Mma Ramotswe stared at him. “And in the meantime, what happens to the garage?”
    Mr J.L.B. Matekoni sighed. “You run it. You and that secretary of yours, the Assistant Manager. Let her do it. It’ll be all right.”
    Mma Ramotswe pursed her lips. “All right,” she said. “We’ll look after it, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, until you start to feel better.”
    “I’m fine,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”
     
    SHE DID not drive home to Zebra Drive, although she knew that the two foster children would be waiting there for her. Motholeli, the girl, would have prepared their evening meal by now, and she needed little supervision or help, in spite of her wheelchair. And the boy, Puso, who was inclined to be rather boisterous, would perhaps have expended most of his energy and would be ready for his bath and his bed, both of which Motholeli could prepare for him.
    Instead of going home, she turned left at Kudu Road and made her way down past the flats to the house in Odi Way where her friend Dr Moffat lived. Dr Moffat, who used to run the hospital out at Mochudi, had looked after her father and had always been prepared to listen to her when she was in difficulties. She had spoken to him about Note before she had confided in anybody else, and he had told her, as gently