“They do eat, too,” said James. “They eat bait off of the hooks when we fish for them.”
Rollo had forgotten this fact when he said that fishes never ate; and, having nothing to say in reply to it, now, he was silent, and only looked at his fish.
“O, I wish I had a fish!” said Henry. “If I had kept my dipper, now, I might have had one.”
“I don’t believe you could have caught one,” said Rollo.
“Yes, I could; and I believe I will take my dipper, after all, and catch me a fish.”
“No,” said Rollo, “you lent me the dipper, and I lent you my basket instead; and now I must keep it till we get home.”
“No,” said Henry, “it is my dipper, and I only lent it to you; and I have a right to it whenever I want it. So you must give it to me.”
But Rollo was very far from being convinced that he ought to give back the dipper then. He had borrowed it, he said, for the whole expedition, and he had a right to keep it till he got home. Besides, he had a fish in it, and there was nothing that he could do with him, if Henry took away the dipper.
But Henry said he did not think of catching a little fish in his dipper, when he lent it to Rollo. If he had, he should not have lent it to him. He only lent it to him to get raspberries in. But Rollo insisted that he had lent it to him for the whole expedition, and to put any thing in it he pleased.