Besides, one might get all the main things correct, yet make a slip in some little unimportant detail.

Then, by-and-by, some Johnny would come along, who could no more have written a page of your book than he could fly, but who happens to be intimately acquainted with the locality.

He ignores the plot, the character-study, all the careful work on the essentials; but he spots your trivial error concerning some completely unimportant detail.

So off he writes to the papers, triumphantly airing his little tit-bit of superior information; other mediocre people take it up--and you never hear the end of it." Helen laughed, tender amusement in her eyes.
"Ronnie dear, I admit that not many Johnnies could write your books.
But most Johnnies can fly, now-a-days! You must be more up-to-date in your similes, old boy; or you will have your wife writing to the papers, remarking that you are behind the times! But, seriously, Ronnie, you should be grateful to anybody who takes the trouble to point out an error, however small, in one of your books.

You are keen that your work should be perfect; and if a mistake is mentioned, it can be set right.
Why, surely you remember, when you read me the scene in the manuscript you wrote just after our marriage, in which a good lady could not sit down upon a small chair, owing to her _toupet_, I--your admiring and awestruck wife--ventured to point out that a _toupet_ was not a crinoline; and you were quite grateful, Ronnie.