The story takes place in a small Italian town hundreds of years ago. A businessman owed a large sum of money to a moneylender who was very old and ugly. By chance or not, he liked the daughter of the debtor. The cunning moneylender decided to offer the businessman a deal that would pay off all his debt. Of course, there was a catch to pay off the debt, the moneylender wanted the hand of the man's daughter. The man didn’t like the idea, actually he responded with a look of disgust.

The moneylender came up with a challenge, he said that he would put two pebbles in a bag - one black and one white, and the businessman's daughter would pull them out herself without seeing them. If she took a black one, the debt of the man would be eliminated, but she had to marry the ugly moneylender. If she pulled a white one, the debt would be eliminated and the daughter would not need to get married.

The moneylender bent down and picked two pebbles from the street, but the girl saw the trick of the man who put two black pebbles in his bag. The daughter had three options before her.

1. To refuse to pick a pebble.

2. To pull out both of them and expose the swindler.

3. To pull out a black stone being aware that she was deceived, to save her father from a large debt.

Instead, the girl took a pebble from the bag and before looking at it she pretended that she had accidentally dropped it on the ground. It got lost among the others, afterwards the daughter turned to the moneylender and said: "Oh, clumsy me. Well, it doesn't matter if you see which pebble is in the bag, we will still know which one I pulled out."

Of course, she was aware that the other black stone was left in the bag. The man did not want to be accused and exposed as a swindler, so he crossed off the businessman's debt and did not marry his daughter.

The moral of the story is: we can always deal with difficult situations as long as we think carefully and do not put up with the options that seem most obvious.