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.

* * *