“Here you be, missies!” he shouted, grinning and nodding to the children; “now you jes’ watch—here she comes! Here she comes! Betta watch out her way!”
Just at that instant Mrs. Merrill heard a great grunting behind them and dodged out of the way of a great hog who, grunting and sniffing and puffing, was rooting her way along the side of the train.
“She knows me!” shouted the cook from his doorway; “now you jes’ watch!”
No need to tell folks to watch! With that great creature grunting near (though the girls did notice that she seemed tame enough) nobody wanted to look at anything else! The hog sniffed along till she found the dining car door; then, with a snort of satisfaction, she raised up on her hind legs, forelegs braced against the train and—yes, the girls could hardly believe it!—ate out of the bucket the cook held for her.
For a few minutes no one said a word, but as the hog’s hunger was partly satisfied the cook jumped down from the car door, the hog dropping down just at the same time and following him, and set the bucket on the ground. In an instant pigs came running from here and there and there was a wild scramble around that bucket!
“He’s trained them—that cook has,” explained the conductor as a whistle from the engine sent them all hurrying back into the train. “We pass here every other day at just this same time and that old cook—he’s just as regular with his bucket of scraps as the road is running the train! And I’ll declare it does seem to me those pigs are the smartest about knowing which is the dining car! They don’t miss it. And that one old hog, he’s got her trained to climb up to the door every time! Who’s ever heard of a cook like that? And he always wants the children on the train to see it—that cook does!”
“Don’t they do the queerest things in Florida!” exclaimed Mary Jane as she settled back into her seat and picked up her box of strawberries again. “First there were orstriches and alligators—’member how they slid down that shoot, Alice?”
“Do I?” cried Alice, laughing at the recollection; “and remember the jelly fish and the crawdads, Mary Jane?” Mary Jane giggled.
“But who would ever have thought of pigs eating from the dining car?” continued Alice.
The ride that afternoon seemed long and the girls had almost tired of drawing pictures and counting stops and talking of the sights they had seen when the twilight brought the porter to light the lamps and the dining car man shouting, “First call for dinner! Dinner in the dining car!”