FROM THE LIFE
origin. His mother had died of privations and malnutrition before he had been weaned. His spinster aunt, a dressmaker, had raised him from infancy; and his only "comforter" had been a bone button sewed on a rag. It had been on a button that he had cut his teeth. Even as a growing boy he had gone to sleep sucking a button on his night-shirt—secretly, of course. And there was still, for the Attorney-General, the satisfaction of a repressed instinct in this button play, although he was ignorant of the reason for it or the origin of it.
He stopped it as soon as he heard his secretary at his door, and, turning, he stood in the center of the room and watched the young man enter.
It was characteristic of Warren so to turn alertly to any new-comer, and it was characteristic of him to regard even Pritchard with a mechanical habit of scrutiny as he regarded every one who came to interview him. He used to say that he could tell if a man was going to lie to him by the way he crossed the room. And he was aware at once—though his mind was on another matter—that there was something not quite right about the boy.
To the casual glance Pritchard was merely a good-looking youth with smooth black hair that may have been pomaded, a small black mustache that looked petted, long black eyelashes, a dimpled, plump chin, and a dark mole on his cheek that touched off his girlish complexion like a beauty
[ 94 ]
