What he had not taught her, however, was an extensive knowledge of the master poets and their works; and Toni's ignorance betrayed her hopelessly.
At the old-fashioned school she had attended, few poets were considered fit for the girls' reading; Tennyson, of course, was included in the pupils' studies, and Shakespeare, carefully edited, was a standby; but of the works of Browning, Rossetti, Swinburne, Keats, Toni was lamentably ignorant.
When, therefore, in the article before her she found a quotation from one of Robert Browning's poems, followed almost immediately by a line from one of the poet's wife's writings, she concluded, hastily, that the printers were at fault, and cheerfully amended the latter initials to the one magic R. In the same way she confused Keats and Yeats; and finished by ascribing to Christina Rossetti one of Dante Gabriel's most impassioned utterances; thus destroying whatever value the article might have had, as a critical appreciation of the various writers' work.
Having completed her task Toni raised her eyes to look at her husband, and found him lying back in his chair watching her with a very kindly glance.
"Finished, little girl? That's good. I'll just initial it and send it back." He took the sheets she handed him and raised his eyebrows at the numerous corrections. "I say, they must be getting careless at the office to let all these slips go through!" He ran his eye over the page, more from force of habit than because he expected to find any more corrections necessary; and suddenly Toni, watching, saw him frown.
"I say, Toni, you've made a mistake." He tried not to speak sharply, for after all proof-reading is an art. "This line—'There may be Heaven, there must be Hell'—that's Robert Browning all right; but the next quotation is from the Sonnets to the Portuguese."
"Is it?" Toni did not understand.
"Well, Mrs. Browning wrote those, you know." He was busy repairing Toni's mistake. "And the next is hers, too. And——" he was skimming down the page "—why, you little goose, it was Dante Rossetti who wrote 'The Blessed Damosel.'"
"Was it? I thought her name was Christina." Toni's voice faltered; for though she did not yet realize the enormity of her offence, she knew that Owen was annoyed by her stupidity.
"Her name? Why, of course her name was Christina; but this happens to be his poem, you see."