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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, please–I mean on your unvaccinated arm.’

Overcome by her earnestness the policeman hoisted her on his burly shoulder. The apparent arrest made a diversion; all eyes turned towards her.

‘You Narronim!’ (fools), she shrieked, desperately mustering her scraps of Yiddish. ‘Your children are safe. Ich bin vaccinated. Look!’ She rolled up her sleeve. ‘Der policeman ist vaccinated. Look–if I tap him he winces. See!’

‘Hold on, missie!’ The policeman grimaced.

‘The King ist vaccinated,’ went on Bloomah, ‘and the Queen, and the Prince of Wales, yes, even the Teachers themselves. There are no devils inside there. This paper’–she held up the bill–‘is lies and falsehood.’ She tore it into fragments.

‘No; it is true as the Law of Moses,’ retorted a man in the mob.

‘As the Law of Moses!’ echoed the women hoarsely.

Bloomah had an inspiration. ‘The Law of Moses! Pooh! Don’t you know this is written by the Meshummodim?‘

The crowd looked blank, fell silent. If, indeed, the handbill was written by apostates, what could it hold but Satan’s lies?

Bloomah profited by her moment of triumph. ‘Go home, you Narronim!’ she cried pityingly from her perch. And then, veering round towards the children behind the bars: ‘Shut up, you squalling sillies!’ she cried. ‘As for you, Golda Benjamin, I’m ashamed of you–a girl of your age! Put your sleeve down, cry-baby!’

Bloomah would have carried the day had not her harangue distracted the police from observing another party of rioters–women, assisted by husbands hastily summoned from stall and barrow, who were battering at a side gate. And at this very instant they burst it open, and with a great cry poured into the playground, screaming and searching for their progeny.

The police darted round to the new battlefield, expecting an attack upon doors and windows, and Bloomah was hastily set down in the seething throng and carried with it in the wake of the police, who could not prevent it flooding through the broken side gate.

The large playground became a pandemonium of parents, children, police, and teachers all shouting and gesticulating. But there was no riot. The law could not prevent mothers and fathers from snatching their offspring to their bosoms and making off overjoyed. The children who had not the luck to be kidnapped escaped of themselves, some panic-stricken, some merely mischievous, and in a few minutes the school was empty.

* * * * *

The School Management Committee sat formally to consider this unprecedented episode. It was decided to cancel the attendance for the day. Red marks, black marks–all fell into equality; the very ciphers were reduced to their native nothingness. The school-week was made to end on the Thursday.

Next Monday morning saw Bloomah at her desk, happiest of a radiant sisterhood. On the wall shone the Banner.