A boy was walking at a market with his sister. But the little girl stopped in front of a toy shop. She was looking at something inside the shop's window. The boy asked, "What are you looking at?" His sister pointed at the doll（玩偶）. The boy told her that he would buy the doll for her. The sister was very happy. Then the boy asked the shopkeeper, "How much does this doll cost?" The shopkeeper looked at the boy and asked, "Well, how can you pay?" The boy took out all the seashells（贝壳）that he had collected from the beach and gave them to the shopkeeper. The shopkeeper took the seashells and started counting them as if they were coins. Then he turned to the boy. The boy asked him, "Are they enough?" The shopkeeper said, "Yes, they are more than enough." He kept four of the seashells and gave the rest back to the boy.
The boy put the seashells back into his pocket happily and left with his sister and the new doll. The shopkeeper's assistant（助手）was surprised. He asked the shopkeeper, "Why did you do that? That doll costs a lot of money. And it certainly costs more than four seashells." The shopkeeper replied, "To us, these are just seashells. But to that boy, they're very precious. When he grows up, he'll remember that he once bought a doll for his sister with seashells. It might remind him that there are wonderful and kind people in the world. And perhaps he will also be generous（大方的）and kind to others.
