Read these lines: "For there lay The Combs, the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped long in a Broadway window. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone." Later he says: "I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs." Taken together, the quoted lines show that each gift

1. The combs are for hair, and her hair has been cut off and sold. 2. The chain she has bought is for a watch, and he says he sold the watch to pay for the combs. 3. Each present therefore arrives just after the thing it was made for has been given away. 4. The gifts are not too dear and not badly chosen, they are simply unusable, option D. 5. Option B fails because both gifts are exactly what the other had long wanted. 6. Option A misses the point, since the cost is what makes the gifts meaningful rather than what spoils them. 7. Option C adds a shop detail that the quoted lines never supply. _Source: O. Henry, The Four Million (1906), public domain_