She had tried several times early in their marriage to carry the intimacy of the bedroom to the breakfast table. He had listened to her endearments and furtive reminiscences at such moments with eyes seemingly incapable of comprehending and she had felt each time that her talk was obscene, and grown frightened.
Her death brought no perceptible change in Judge Smith's life. He continued a gentleman. His name appeared at intervals in the newspapers as having gone to Washington to argue a case before the Supreme Court. His friends felt on reading this that the Supreme Court was an institution perfectly fitted to him. It was hard to imagine anybody but a man who looked and acted like Judge Smith arguing a case in the Supreme Court.
The Smith home, a brownstone house in Prairie Avenue, was occupied by the Judge, his daughter Henrietta and a housekeeper. Henrietta had finished boarding school at nineteen. She had since then busied herself as an assistant housekeeper. At twenty-one she impressed people with being as naive and fresh as a girl of seventeen. It was hard to think of her as in her twenties.
She was a round-eyed, round-faced child with fluffy blonde hair, a small-boned body and a general air of juvenile fragility. She talked very little but bubbled with exclamations of delight, excitement, enthusiasm, astonishment. These she was continually employing, regardless of their incongruity. She greeted people with delight, saying.
"Oh! I'm so glad to see you! Isn't it wonderful?" And managed to scatter a dozen exclamation marks through the sentences. If one said to her, "Did you see Sothern and Marlowe last week?" she replied excitedly, "Oh no! I missed them! I'm so sorry! Aren't they wonderful?"
Asked for an opinion of a new hat she would exude the same exclamation marks in, "Oh! It's simply too adorable for words! I'm just mad about it!"
And to such a remark as, "I read in the paper the other day that President Roosevelt went fishing," she would offer a wide-eyed stare and exclaim, overcome with astonishment, "Why! Gracious! Is that so! Isn't that awfully funny!" And incomprehensibly, she would laugh as if overcome with mirth.
People regarded her as a charmingly vivacious, well-mannered girl. Her exclamations pleased them by lending an importance to their small talk—a small talk which constituted nearly the whole of their conversational lives. Her explosive banalities invigorated them. They said of her:
"Judge Smith's daughter is so alive. She's so fresh and young and so enthusiastic."
Henrietta thought her father the greatest and most important man in the world. She called him "FATHer," stressing the first syllable in a manner that distinguished him from all other fathers. Her admiration satisfied the judge. He demanded of her only obedience, respect and chastity. Since she gave him these he looked upon her as a shining example of true womanhood.