Describe Jim and Della's apartment.

From the beginning of O. Henry’s classic short story “The Gift of the Magi,” the reader is aware of the poverty of the protagonists. The opening paragraph references the pitiful savings of the female character, Della, despite her frugalness and the emotional pain that her meager savings has caused. O. Henry, born William Sidney Porter, depicts an economicallyndepressed setting for the story that will follow. As he notes early in “The Gift of the Magi,” the setting will be sparse and confined due to the socioeconomic conditions in which the characters, the Youngs, exist: “Furnished rooms at a cost of $8 a week. There is little more to say about it.” As the story progresses, the author continues to emphasize the limited financial means of the apartment’s occupants, describing a letter box too small to accommodate a letter, and a looking glass, “the kind of looking-glass that is placed in $8 furnished rooms. It was very narrow. A person could see only a little of himself at a time.”
This is the setting in which O. Henry’s story of a young struggling couple sacrificing for each other in a particularly ironic manner takes place. Della, of course, cuts off and sells her long beautiful hair in order to buy a gold chain for Jim’s precious gold watch. Jim, in the meantime, had sold the watch in order to buy combs for Della’s hair. It is the sacrifice each makes for the other that gives the story its title. Jim and Della Young occupy a very humble abode—one befitting their stage in life. While the author presents only minor details about their apartment, it is clear that his protagonists are of very limited means.

In O. Henry's short story "The Gift of the Magi," Jim and Della live in "furnished rooms at a cost of $8 per week." The narrator does not provide the reader with much information about the rooms, leaving much of the imagery up to the reader's imagination. In fact, after stating the cost of the rooms, the narrator is clear that "[t]here is little more to say about it," which suggests that the rooms are so small and so sparse that they don't warrant any physical description at all.
Despite this statement from the narrator, two clear details that give the reader a sense of the apartment are present in the story. For example, Della looks at herself in a very small, very narrow mirror that hangs between two windows in one of their furnished rooms. These details are significant because two windows may allow enough light into the room so that Della can actually see herself and her hair, the hair that is as important to the plot of the story as the poverty in which the two characters live.