"There wasn't any kind of a thing, millions of years ago, that could talk," she said calmly, "so, of course, they couldn't learn."
"Then you can't talk, either," said Charlie, in triumph. And he subsided and returned to the eating of crackers, of which, as everybody knows, the saurians were extremely fond.
Sally, meanwhile, was enjoying the prospect of treetops; an unbroken prospect of treetops, except for a swamp which, in historic times, became their own little valley.
Sally had ceased, for the moment, her flitting lightly from bough to bough, and there was no sign of her presence; and Charlie had come to the end of his crackers and was browsing around in the grass, picking up a crumb here and there.
"Hello!" said a strange voice; a strange voice, but a very pleasant one. "As I'm a living sinner, if here isn't a little pony!"
Charlie looked up into the eyes of a very serious young man. The eyes were twinkling over the wall and through the gap in the trees. Charlie decided not to be frightened. But he shook his head. He wasn't a pony.
"Well, well, of course not," the voice went on. "I was rather hasty, but it looked like a pony, at the first glance. I guess it's a fierce bull."
Charlie shook his head again, less positively. Now that it had been suggested, he yearned to be a fierce bull. He wished that he had thought of it before he shook his head.
"A camel?" asked the young man. "Can it be a camel?"
Once more Charlie shook his head, and he laughed.