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.
'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.'