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.