Down rippled the brown cascade. "Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting
the mass with a practised hand.

"Give it to me quick," said Della.

Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed
metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present.

She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else.
There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all
of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in
design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by
meretricious ornamentation--as all good things should do. It was even
worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she that it must be Jim's.
It was like him. Quietness and value--the description applied to both.
Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with
the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious
about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes
looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used
in place of a chain.

When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence
and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went
to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is
always a tremendous task, dear friends--a mammoth task.

Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls
that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at
her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.