Yale law professor Ian Ayres continues his American Contract Law course with a lecture on how courts decide whether two parties actually reached an agreement. He works through Embry v. Hargadine, McKittrick Dry Goods, a case about a disputed reemployment contract, using it to explain the objective theory of mutual assent: what matters is not what a party privately intended but what a reasonable person would understand from their words and conduct. Ayres walks through the facts of the case, the arguments on both sides, and the court's reasoning, drawing out the doctrinal test for when an exchange counts as a bargain. The lecture is part of a Coursera-linked series and assumes some familiarity with the course's earlier material on offer and acceptance.