It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her.

For there lay The Combs-- the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped for long in a Broadway window.

Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy.

Isn't a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now.

Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings.

She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present.

Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail.

They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession.

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.