[XI]
SUNNY GOURD AND LADY TRUMPET-VINE
Very much out of the beaten track—in fact, only to be approached by an old road that had long fallen into disuse—stood a neglected cabin, a poor weather-beaten thing with sunken roof and decaying timbers.
Its door-yard had already begun to grow the young pine trees which come up in great plumes of long, green needles; and the little garden plot, which used to boast its vegetables, had become a mass of brambles and nettles.
"How sad this all is," the poor little cabin used to sigh. "Although I suppose it is better to be harboring rabbits and squirrels, and to have my beams plastered up with nests, than to have no living thing enjoy my shelter. Still, I wish spring when it comes would bring people to unlock my door and children to fill these poor little rooms with their laughter."
For the cabin could remember many children that had lived there, and sometimes it seemed to him that he heard them again, playing in the nearby woods, or running and calling down the road.
Sometimes he did hear such voices, for people often passed the cabin on the way to a distant plantation, and children were as likely to be among them as not.
But the squirrels and the rabbits had it pretty much their own way with the deserted cabin, running in and out beneath the underpinning; and the only noise around the place was that of Mrs. Yellowhammer when she came pounding at the roof for what the decayed old shingles might conceal.
"I declare, you poor old house!" the energetic bird would say. "It's terrible how the worms are eating at your timbers and shingles." Whereat she would fall to and nearly pound the life out of the poor old cabin, in her determination to get all there was.
But Mrs. Yellowhammer and the rabbits that danced in the moonlight were not the only visitors, for often in the summer time came the humming-birds to visit the trumpet-vine which covered nearly all of one end of the structure.