“It seems to be a case of bailment,” said Mary.
“O yes,” said Rollo, who now recollected his father’s conversation on that subject some days before.
“And so, you know, the question,” continued Mary, “whether he ought to pay or not, depends upon circumstances.”
“Well,” said Rollo, who began to recall to mind the principles which his father had laid down upon the subject, “it was for his benefit, not mine, and so he ought to pay.”
All this conversation about bailment, and about its being for his benefit, not Rollo’s, was entirely unintelligible to Henry, who had never studied the law of bailment at all. He looked first at Mary, and then at Rollo, and finally said,
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
So Mary explained to him what her father had said. She told him, first, that whenever one boy intrusted his property of any kind to the hands of another boy, it was a bailment; and that the question whether the one who took the thing ought to pay for it, if it was lost, depended upon the degree of care he took of it, considered in connection with the question, whether the bailment was for the benefit of the bailor, or the bailee.
“What is bailor and the bailee?” said Henry.
“Why, Rollo bailed you his fish,” said Mary. “Rollo was bailor, and you bailee.”
“No,” said Henry, “he only gave me back my dipper, and the fish was in it.”