"She won't come down unless she wants to," Charlie grumbled.
Sally was recovering, in a measure, from her fit of chuckling. She leaned far forward, below the screen of leaves.
"Oh, yes, I will," she called, in a low, clear voice. "Besides, I want to. Charlie was mistaken about the saw-horse. He meant saurus. And I was a flying lizard and this was a coal tree. From the top of the tree you can't see anything but treetops and swamps. It's millions of years ago, you know. And father's got the skeleton of this very lizard up in his room, and he said that it used to fly right up in the topmost branches of the coal trees and he told me about the sauruses that used to be." She had dropped to the ground. "Oh, it's very interesting."
"It must be," the young man smilingly replied; "and I should suppose that it must be rather interesting for your father to have such a pupil."
"It isn't," Sally returned. "That is—father only told me those things the other day."
The young man laughed. "I guess you must be Professor Ladue's little girl."
"Yes," said Sally, "we are. That is, I am, and this is my brother Charlie."
"The only and original saw-horse. You, I suppose, were a—we'll call it a gynesaurus—"
Sally clapped her hands and gave a little laugh of delight.
"And this," he continued, laying his hand affectionately upon the small head beside him, "is my small sister, Henrietta Sanderson, who would be happy to be any kind of a beast that you tell her about. She is ten years old and she dotes on being strange beasts."