The Gift of the Magi, Part 2: The Chain

She stopped at a sign that read “Madame Sofronie: Hair Goods of All Kinds.” Della ran up the stairs and tried to catch her breath. The woman there was large, very pale and cold.

“Will you buy my hair?” asked Della.

“I buy hair,” said the woman. “Take your hat off and let me have a look at it.”

Down came the brown waterfall.

“Twenty dollars,” she said, lifting the hair with an expert hand.

“Give it to me quick,” said Della.

The next two hours flew by on rosy wings. Della was searching the shops for Jim’s present.

At last she found it. It had surely been made for Jim and no one else. There was nothing like it in any of the shops, and she had turned every one of them inside out. It was a platinum chain for a pocket watch, simple and plain in design. It was even good enough for The Watch. As soon as she saw it, she knew that it must be Jim’s. It was like him. Quiet and valuable: those words described them both. They took twenty-one dollars from her for it, and she hurried home with the eighty-seven cents.

With that chain on his watch, Jim could check the time proudly in any company. The watch was grand, but he sometimes looked at it secretly, because it hung on an old leather strap instead of a chain.

When Della reached home, her excitement gave way a little to good sense. She took out her curling irons, lit the gas and went to work to repair the damage that love and generosity had done. That, dear friends, is always a huge job.

Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close curls. They made her look just like a schoolboy who has run away from school. She looked at herself in the mirror for a long time, very carefully.

“If Jim doesn’t kill me before he takes a second look at me,” she said to herself, “he’ll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do? Oh, what could I do with a dollar and eighty-seven cents?”

At seven o’clock the coffee was made, and the frying pan was on the back of the stove, hot and ready to cook the chops.

Jim was never late. Della held the watch chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door. Then she heard his step on the stairs far below, and for a moment her face turned white. She had a habit of saying little silent prayers about simple everyday things, and now she whispered, “Please God, make him think I am still pretty.”

The door opened, and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two, and he already had a family to take care of! He needed a new overcoat, and he had no gloves.

Jim stopped inside the door. He stood as still as a hunting dog that smells a bird. His eyes were fixed on Della, and there was a look in them that she could not read. It frightened her.