"I don't know, father," she answered. "Is it a—an alligator?"
"No," he said, stopping and looking thoughtfully at the skeleton. "No, it is not an alligator, although you came nearer than I should have thought you would. You were just barely warm, Sally. It is a distant relative of the alligator; perhaps I should call it a connection. The thirteenth cousin of his hundred thousandth great-grandfather, or something like that. It is a sort of a lizard, Sally. It is a very small one."
"Oh!" cried Sally. "A small one! A small lizard! Why, father!"
Professor Ladue smiled. "It lived a great many thousands of years ago. Nobody knows how many thousands of years, although they will tell you very glibly. They don't know anything about it except that it was a long time. I know that. This little lizard is a kind that nobody has ever discovered; nobody except me. It is my lizard. It must be known by my name. What do you think of that, Sally?"
"It must be very fine," Sally murmured, "to discover things."
"At that far-off time," the professor continued, "there were lots of great horrid creeping and flying things. Even my little lizard may have been able to fly. See! These seem to be the beginning of his wing bones. There are some bones missing, so that I can't tell, yet, whether he had wings that would bear him up. But probably he had. Probably he had." And the professor relapsed into a thoughtful silence.
"Father," said Sally presently. She had been thinking and her interest in the skeleton was more active than it had been.
The professor looked up. "Any question that Miss Ladue has to ask," he observed, "will be cheerfully answered, provided that I know the answer. If I do not know the answer, and have the courage to say so, I trust she will not regard me as wholly ignorant of the subject."
Sally gave vent to a chuckle which was entirely unexpected; entirely unexpected by herself, at least.
"Father," she asked, as soon as she had managed to suppress her chuckles, "then could your little lizard fly up high?"