The Disappearing Eye

Transcriber's Notes: 1. Page scan source: https://books.google.com/books?id=ERQNAAAAYAAJ (Harvard University)
The Disappearing Eye
Adventures are to the adventurous, said Cannington, with the air of a man who believes that he is saying something undeniably smart.
Good Lord! I retorted, twisting the motor car round a corner. Since when has the British subaltern given up his leisure to reading Beaconsfield's novels?
Cannington serenely puffed his cigarette into a brighter glow. I don't know what you're talking about, old chap, said he indifferently.
I talk of 'Ixion in Heaven,' or--if you prefer it--of 'Coningsby.' Beaconsfield was so enamoured of his apothegm that he inserted it in both tales.
I don't know what you're talking about, said Cannington again, and his puzzled look proved that he spoke the truth. A chap called Marr wrote that in my sister's album, and told her it was his own.
I daresay; more ideas are stolen than pocket-handkerchiefs, according to Balzac. And, after all, Beaconsfield may have cribbed the saying.
Oh! I see what you are driving at: Marr copied it out of a book.
Undoubtedly, unless he lived before 'Coningsby' and 'Ixion' were written--somewhere about the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Oh! Marr isn't so old as that, protested the boy, chuckling; although he isn't a spring chicken, by any means. What Mabel sees in him, I can't for the life of me imagine.
Humph! You were never renowned for imagination, Cannington, I said kindly, and in your particular case it doesn't much matter. You're the man behind the gun, and all you have to do is to fire against the seen enemy.