One glorious summer morning Michael took ten small eager newsboys down to pick wild strawberries for the day, and they came back dirty, tired, strawberry streaked, and happy, and loudly sang the praises of Old Orchard as though it had been a Heaven. After that Michael had no trouble in transplanting any one he wished to take with him.
He found a poor wretch who had lately moved with his family to one of the crowded tenements in the alley. He was sodden in drink and going to pieces fast. Michael sobered him down, found that he used to be a master carpenter, and forthwith transplanted him to Old Orchard, family and all.
Under the hand of the skilled carpenter there sprang up immediately a colony of tents and later small one-roomed shacks or bungalows. Michael bought lumber and found apprentices to help, and the carpenter of the colony repaired barns and outhouses, fences, or built shacks, whenever the head of affairs saw fit to need another.
The only person in the whole alley whom Michael had invited in vain to the farm was old Sally. She had steadily refused to leave her gaily papered room, her curtained window and her geranium. It was a symbol of "ould Ireland" to her, and she felt afraid of this new place of Michael's. It seemed to her superstitious fancy like an immediate door to a Heaven, from which she felt herself barred by her life. It assumed a kind of terror to her thoughts. She was not ready to leave her little bit of life and take chances even for Michael. And so old Sal sat on her doorstep and watched the alley dwellers come and go, listening with interest to each new account of the farm, but never willing to see for herself. Perhaps the secret of her hesitation after all went deeper than superstition. She had received private information that Old Orchard had no Rum Shop around the corner. Old Sally could not run any risks, so she stayed at home.
But the carpenter's wife was glad to cook for the men when the busy days of planting and weeding and harvesting came, and the colony grew and grew. Two or three other men came down with their families, and helped the carpenter to build them little houses, with a bit of garden back, and a bed of flowers in front. They could see the distant sea from their tiny porches, and the river wound its salty silver way on the other hand. It was a great change from the alley. Not all could stand it, but most of them bore the summer test well. It would be when winter set its white distance upon them, chilled the flowers to slumber, and stopped the labor that the testing time would come; and Michael was thinking about that.