Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the “Sofronie.”

“Will you buy my hair?” asked Della.

“I buy hair,” said Madame. “Take yer hat off and let’s have a sight at the looks

of it.”

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 knew 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