And the children giggled crumbily and presently they sidled and edged up to their aunt and began to finger her and pluck at her clothes. Seeing his wife so set Old Mole off on an entirely new train of thought and feeling, and he began to contrast the Copas atmosphere with this domestic interior. Very queerly it gave a sort of life to that crusted old formula that had, with so many others, gone by the board in his eruption from secondary education, wherein it was laid down that a woman's place is her home. He could never, without discomfort, apply any formula to Matilda, but to see her there, with the bloom on her, in her full beauty, with the five little children at her knees, made this idea so attractive that he was loath to relinquish it: nor did he do so until Matilda asked if she might see the house, when she and Mrs. Boothroyd and the five children left him alone with the ruins of the cake and the American organ. He was profoundly uneasy. He had not exactly idealized the Copas theater and all its doings, but he had come to them on the crest of a violent wave of reaction and had been apt to set them against and above everything in the world that was solid and stolid and workaday. It had been enchanted for him by Matilda, and she had in June Street set an even more potent spell upon him and wafted him not into any kingdom of the imagination, but into the warm heart of life itself. In the Copas world he had made no allowance for children: in June Street, in dull industrial respectability, children were paramount. They surrounded Matilda and set him, in his slow fashion, tingling to the marvel of her. His response to this miracle took the form of a desire to open his pockets to the children. He took out a handful of money, and had selected five shillings when the door opened and a man entered, a dark, white-faced, thin-lipped man, with dirty hands and an aggressive jut of the shoulders. "Ye've been tea-partying, I see," said the man. Old Mole explained his identity. The man put his head out of the door and yelled to his wife. She returned with Matilda, but the children did not come. James Boothroyd ignored the visitors to his house and said to his cowering wife: "You'll clean up yon litter an' you'll lock t'door. What'll neighbors say of us? I don't know these folk. You'll lock t'door and then you'll gi' me me tea in t'kitchen." There was no sign of anger in the man. He had taken in the situation at a glance and was concerned only to bring it to the issue he desired. His relations by marriage were spotted by a world which he shunned as darkest Hell, and he would have none of them. With as much dignity as he could muster, Old Mole led his wife out into June Street. He was filled only with pity for Bertha. Said Matilda: "Didn't I tell you he was a devil?" Later in their lodging he asked her: "Are all the men in those streets like that?"