"Yep," he answered; "like a pigeon. Or, more probably, he flew more like a bat than like a pigeon."
"Right up into the tops of the trees?"
"Right up into the topmost branches of the coal trees."
"The coal trees!"
"The coal trees. Fed on the fruit. Large lizards customarily ate furnace coal, middle-sized lizards ate stove coal. Little lizards ate chestnut coal."
Sally burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. In all her experience of her father, she had never known him to be so amusing.
"Ate pea coal," replied the professor promptly, "and the tiniest babies ate buckwheat coal. Very nourishing, chestnuts and peas and buckwheat. Cracked it with their teeth."
Sally was still giggling.
"Seriously, Sally," said the professor, with a change of manner, "by the coal trees I meant the trees which have become the coal we are burning in the stove and the furnace and to make steam. I see no reason to doubt that this little lizard could fly up into the tops of the trees. Perhaps he actually alighted on some tree which we now have down cellar in the coal bin."