Although Bloomah's knowledge of Yiddish was slight--as became a scion of an old English family--she could make out their elemental ejaculations. 'You murderers!' 'Give me my Rachel!' 'They are destroying our daughters as Pharaoh destroyed our sons.' 'Give me back my children, and I'll go back to Russia.' 'They are worse than the Russians, the poisoners!' 'O God of Abraham, how shall I live without my Leah?' On the other side of the bars the children--released for the dinner-interval--were clamouring equally, shouting, weeping, trying to get to their mothers. Some howled, with their sleeves rolled up, to exhibit the upper arm. 'See,' the women cried, 'the red marks! Oh, the poisoners!' A light began to break upon Bloomah's brain. Evidently the School Board had suddenly sent down compulsory vaccinators. 'I won't die,' moaned a plump golden-haired girl. 'I'm too young to die yet.' 'My little lamb is dying!' A woman near Bloomah, with auburn wisps showing under her black wig, wrung her hands. 'I hear her talk--always, always about the red mark. Now they have given it her. She is poisoned--my little apple.' 'Your little carrot is all right,' said Bloomah testily. 'They've only vaccinated her.' The woman caught at the only word she understood. 'Vaccinate, vaccinate!' she repeated. Then, relapsing into jargon and raising 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!'