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Plaintiff, a corporation, brought this action to recover of defendants the sum of six hundred and three dollars and ninety cents, claimed to be due from them as the compensation they had promised to pay plaintiff for drying a quantity of prunes—something over eighty-six tons—at the agreed rate of seven dollars per ton. Regarding its own undertaking, plaintiff, in its complaint, alleged merely that it agreed to dry the prunes for defendants, without specifying the degree of care or skill it should employ for that purpose. Defendants in their answer averred that plaintiff contracted to dry and cure the prunes “ in a first-class manner,” but failed to do so, and so negligently performed its contract that its services were of no value; as a counterclaim, defendants further alleged, in effect, that, by reason of the negligence and want of skill of plaintiff in the performance of its contract, the prunes were injured, and defendants thereby sustained damage in the sum of *208 fifteen hundred and twenty-five dollars, for which they prayed judgment.

The court found, among other things, that, by the contract between the parties plaintiff agreed to dry the prunes in a proper and skillful…