s allowed to scamper off to
school in the desperate hope of saving the afternoon attendance.

The London sky was of lead, and the London pavement of mud, but her
heart was aglow with hope. As she reached the familiar street a
certain strangeness in its aspect struck her. People stood at the
doors gossiping and excited, as though no Sabbath pots were a-cooking;
straggling groups possessed the roadway, impeding her advance, and as
she got nearer to the school the crowd thickened, the roadway became
impassable, a gesticulating mob blocked the iron gate.

Poor Bloomah paused in her breathless career ready to cry at this
malicious fate fighting against her, and for the first time allowing
herself time to speculate on what was up. All around her she became
aware of weeping and wailing and shrieking and wringing of hands.

The throng was chiefly composed of Russian and Roumanian women of the
latest immigration, as she could tell by the pious wigs hiding their
tresses. Those in the front were pressed against the bars of the
locked gate, shrieking through them, shaking them with passion.

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 rai