Summary

The day before Christmas, Della counts all the money she has saved over the past year. By haggling mercilessly with the grocer, the butcher, and the vegetable man, swallowing her pride and thinking only of the penny or two that she had saved each time, she has been able to save exactly one dollar and eighty-seven cents. She counts it again, and even one more time, noting that sixty cents of meager sum is in pennies. After counting three times, her situation is the same. She has one dollar and eighty-seven cents, and one day, to buy her beloved husband Jim a Christmas present.

There is nothing to do but cry over the hopelessness of the situation. The couch that Della lies and howls her frustrations out on is threadbare, in keeping with the shabby interior of the furnished flat that...