sing her
hands heavenward: 'A sudden death upon them all!'

Bloomah turned despairingly in search of a wigless woman. One stood at
her elbow.

'Can't you explain to her that the doctors mean no harm?' Bloomah
asked.

'Oh, don't they, indeed? Just you read this!' She flourished a
handbill, English on one side, Yiddish on the other.

Bloomah read the English version, not without agitation:

'Mothers, look after your little ones! The School Tyrants are plotting
to inject filthy vaccine into their innocent veins. Keep them away
rather than let them be poisoned to enrich the doctors.'

There followed statistics to appal even Bloomah. What wonder if the
refugees from lands of persecution--lands in which anything might
happen--believed they had fallen from the frying-pan into the fire; if
the rumour that executioners with instruments had entered the
school-buildings had run like wildfire through the quarter, enflaming
Oriental imagination to semi-madness.

While Bloomah was reading, a head-shawled woman fainted, and the din
and frenzy grew.

'But I was vaccinated when a baby, and I'm all right,' murmured
Bloomah, half to reassure herself.

'My arm! I'm poisoned!' And another pupil flew frantically towards the
gate.

The women outside replied with a dull roar of rage, and hurled
themselves furiously against the lock.

A window on the playground was raised with a sharp snap, and the
head-mistress appeared, shouting alternately at the children and the
parents; but she was neither heard nor understood, and a Polish crone
shook an answering fist.

'You old maid--childless, pitiless!'

Shrill whistles sounded and resounded from every side, and soon a
posse of eight policemen were battling with the besiegers, trying to
push themselves between them and the gate. A fat and genial officer
worked his way past Bloomah, his truncheon ready for action.

'Don't hurt the poor women,' Bloomah pleaded. 'They think their
children are being poisoned.'

'I know, missie. What can you do with such greenhorns? Why don't they
stop in their own country? I've just been vaccinated myself, and it's
no joke to get my arm knocked about like this!'

'Then show them the red marks, and that will quiet them.'

The policeman laughed. A sleeveless policeman! It would destroy all
the dignity and prestige of the force.

'Then I'll show them mine,' said Bloomah resolutely. 'Mine are old
and not very showy, but perhaps they'll do. Lift me up,