So Big · Chapter 12 (2/2)

Among this rubbish she rummaged periodically in the years that followed. Indeed, twenty years later Dirk, coming upon her smoothing out the wrinkled yellow creases of the I.O.U. or shaking the camphor-laden folds of the wine-red cashmere, would say, “At it again! What a sentimental generation yours was, Mother. Pressed flowers! They went out with the attic, didn’t they? If the house caught fire you’d probably run for the junk in that chest. It isn’t worth two cents, the lot of it.”

“Perhaps not,” Selina said, slowly. “Still, there’d be some money value, I suppose, in an early original signed sketch by Rodin.”

“Rodin! You haven’t got a⁠—”

“No, but here’s one by Pool⁠—Roelf Pool⁠—signed. At a sale in New York last week one of his sketches⁠—not a finished thing at all⁠—just a rough drawing that he’d made of some figures in a group that went into the Doughboy statue⁠—brought one thous⁠—”

“Oh, well, that⁠—yes. But the rest of the stuff you’ve got there⁠—funny how people will treasure old stuff like that. Useless stuff. It isn’t even beautiful.”

“Beautiful!” said Selina, and shut the lid of the old chest. “Why, Dirk⁠—Dirk! You don’t even know what beauty is. You never will know.”