He simply stared at her fixedly with
that peculiar expression on his face.
Della wriggled off the table and went for him.
"Jim, darling," she cried, "don't look at me that way.
I had my hair cut off and sold because I couldn't have lived
through Christmas without giving you a present. It'll grow
out again--you won't mind, will you? I just had to do it. My
hair grows awfully fast. Say `Merry Christmas!' Jim, and
let's be happy. You don't know what a nice-- what a
beautiful, nice gift I've got for you."
"You've cut off your hair?" asked Jim, laboriously, as
if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the
hardest mental labor.
"Cut it off and sold it," said Della. "Don't you like
me just as well, anyhow? I'm me without my hair, ain't I?"
Jim looked about the room curiously.
"You say your hair is gone?" he said, with an air
almost of idiocy.
"You needn't look for it," said Della. "It's sold, I
tell you--sold and gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be
good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head
were numbered," she went on with sudden serious sweetness,
"but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put
the chops on, Jim?"
Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He
enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with
discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other
direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year--what is
the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the
wrong answer.
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