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But there was something happy about the place. The front yard was parted in the middle by a sidewalk from gate to doorstep, a sidewalk edged on either side by quart bottles driven neck down into the ground on a slant. A mess of homey flowers planted without a plan but blooming cheerily from their helter-skelter places. The fence and house were whitewashed. The porch and steps scrubbed white.

The very first scene in the story reveals the deceptiveness of appearances through the description of Joe and Missie May’s lovely and cheerful home. The bright imagery in the quote is evocative but becomes an increasingly ominous excerpt of foreshadowing when Slemmons and his gilded coins enter the story. While Missie May and Joe’s marriage may appear to be just as tidy and cheerful as their home, beneath this happy veneer the marriage lacks genuine substance. The next scene reveals the couple’s playful dynamic, reinforcing the appearance of the couple’s happiness, but the theatricality of their interaction parallels the description of their home and indicates all is not well in alleged paradise.

She took it into her hands with trembling and saw first thing that it was no gold piece. It was a gilded half dollar. Then she knew why Slemmons had forbidden anyone to touch his gold. He trusted village eyes at a distance not to recognize his stickpin as a gilded quarter, and his watch charm as a four-bit piece.

At the climax of the story, Missie May finally examines Slemmons’s coin up close. The shocking revelation that the coin is not real gold but merely gilded strongly reinforces the theme of the deceptiveness of appearances. The climax of the story here is a bait and switch because it initially seems that the climax happens earlier when Joe discovers Missie May in bed with Slemmons. However, it is not until months later when Joe finally makes love to his wife again and leaves Slemmons’s gilded coin beneath the pillow for Missie May to find that the true climax of the story is revealed. The steady build to this moment along with the foreshadowing that comes from the story’s title makes Missie May’s realization that she’s betrayed her marriage for nothing but fool’s gold all the more stunning and heartbreaking.

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