"No, father, I didn't know it annoyed you," replied Sally in a colorless voice. "I beg your pardon. But I wasn't spying on you. I was only enjoying myself. I won't do it again." Sally began slipping and sliding and scrambling down the tree. She seemed to have no fear and to be very familiar with the road she was taking. She knew every foothold. Her father watched her as she went from one insecure hold to another. It must have appeared to him a perilous descent, one would suppose; but I do not know what he thought. At all events, he called to her when she had swung off the lowest branch and dropped safely. He still had in his hand that prehistoric bone. "Sally!" he called; "don't you want to come up here?" Sally looked up, evidently greatly surprised. She was not easily surprised. "To your room?" she asked. "Yes," replied her father impatiently, "of course. To my room." "Do you want me to?" Sally is to be excused for pressing the point. She did not wish to make any mistake. Mistakes had been made before. "I should be greatly pleased," said the professor, smiling and bowing airily. "I should consider it a great honor if Miss Sally Ladue would favor me with her company at the present juncture." He leaned a little out of the window. "You know I am working on the skeleton." "Yes," said Sally. "I'll come up right away." It is to be noted that Sally had not answered the exact question which the professor had asked her. She may have been reluctant to answer it just as it was asked. It is to be supposed that she was aware of the question and that she knew the answer. Sally was a truthful young person, but she preferred to take the course that made for peace if it was consistent with truth. The professor did not press the matter. He was again sitting on the floor when Sally knocked on the door and came in. His head was a little better. Perhaps the tiny hammers had nearly finished their work. At all events, he soon forgot it completely. "Sally," he said, after he had been working for some minutes and Sally had been watching him in silence, "what do you think this is?" "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!"