Della counts the money she has saved, realizing it is only $1.87. She wonders how she can buy a Christmas gift for her husband, Jim, with this little money.
Della decides to cut her hair in order to get more money to buy a gift. She gets $20 for it, and so she spends the next two hours searching for the perfect gift for Jim. She finally finds a nice chain for Jim's watch, so that he would not be embarrassed to check his watch in public because of the old leather strap he had to use instead of a chain.
When Della gets back home, she curls her hair and then waits nervously for Jim to get home because she isn't sure how he'll react to her cut hair. When Jim comes home, he gets an unreadable expression on his face, so Della comes up to him and says she's still herself without her hair, leading Jim to show her that he had gotten combs for her hair. Della shows him the chain she had bought for Jim's watch, but gets told he had sold it to buy the combs.