them, that it was some time before I could find out what it was all about.
At last Sharley told me that as they were racing along with their hoops a
strange dog had followed them, and rubbed his nose against their hands,
wanting to make friends with them.

"We are quite sure it is nobody's dog," she said; "or at any rate it is
a dog that has lost its master, and has no home now. So after lessons we
are going to call it, and get it to follow us home. It is waiting for us
outside the door this minute."

"And I am going to make a kennel for it," said Ernest, who was very fond of
sawing and hammering away in the shed behind, the house, and wished to be
a carpenter, when he grew up; "at least, I am going to try, and I think I
can."

I may as well tell you at once that this little stray dog soon got tired of
waiting, outside the door. When lessons were over, and the children went to
look, no doggie was to be found; and as they did not know his name it was
not easy to call him. I have no doubt he found his own master and his own
home again, and was much better off there than he would have been in the
best kennel Ernest could have made, with seven boys and girls to take him
for a walk every day.

However that may be, I tell you of this dog because it was while Ernest was
talking about making a house for it that I was saying to myself, "I wonder
whether this plan of Ernest's about making a kennel will help them to
understand, what I so much want them to learn, about the difference which
there is between the words make and create."

First of all I had to tell them not to talk any more just then, but to