My niece, aged twenty months (do I bore you?), has made her first joke: let it be put on record and handed down to those that come after. She walked into the study, where her father was reading and her mother writing. They agreed not to take any notice of her, in order to see what would happen. She marched up to her father, stroked his face, and said, "Hallo, daddy!" No answer. She gazed round; and then went over to the writing-desk. "Hallo, mummy!" Dead silence. She stood for a moment looking rather puzzled. At last she went back to her father, bent down and patted his slippers and said, "Hallo, boots!" Then she walked quite happily out of the room. However, we won't bother about her, because I have something much more exciting to tell you. M'Gubbin has signed on for the something Rovers for next season! I saw it in the paper; it had a little paragraph all to itself. This is splendid news--I haven't been so happy about anything for a long time. Whaur's your Wully Gaukrodger now? Let us arrange a Pentathlon for them. I'll back M'G., and you can hold the towel for Gauk. My man would win at football of course, and yours at cricket, but the other three events would be exciting. Chess, golf and the minuet, I think. I can see M'Gubbin sliding--_one_, two, three, _one_, two three--there, now he's waggling his left leg. Charles, you're a goner--hand over the stakes. Look here, I smoke too much, at least I have been lately. Let's give it up, Charles. I'll give it up altogether for a week if you will. Did you know that you can allay the craving for tobacco by the judicious use of bull's-eyes? ("Allay" is the word.) You carry a bag of bull's-eyes with you--I swear this is true, I saw it in the press--and whenever you feel a desire to smoke you just pop a bull's-eye in your mouth. In a little while, they say, your taste for tobacco--and I imagine for everything else--is quite gone. This ought to be more widely known, and then your host would say, "Try one of these bull's-eyes, won't you? I import them direct," and you would reply, "Thanks very much, but I would rather have one of my own, if I may." "Have a bull's-eye, if you like," your partner would say at a dance. Of course, too, they would have special bull's-eye compartments in trains; that would be jolly. But it would ruin the stage. The hero who always lights a cigarette before giving off his best epigram--I don't know what he'd do. You see he couldn't ... well, he'd have to wait such a time. Why are they called bull's-eyes? I don't believe I've ever seen a bull's-eye really close. If you look a bull in the eye he doesn't go for you. Which eye? He might be a left-handed bull; you'd look at the wrong eye; then where would you be?