Road end, eyeing the 'buses with a wanting-a-ride like air, instead of the
contemptuous sneer he generally adopts towards those uncouth productions.
Red, green blue, drab, cinnamon-colour, passed and crossed, and jostled,
and stopped, and blocked, and the cads telegraphed, and winked, and nodded,
and smiled, and slanged, but Mr. Sponge regarded them not. He had a sort of
''bus' panorama in his head, knew the run of them all, whence they started,
where they stopped, where they watered, where they changed, and, wonderful
to relate, had never been entrapped into a sixpenny fare when he meant to
take a threepenny one. In cab and ''bus' geography there is not a more
learned man in London.

Mark him as he stands at the corner. He sees what he wants, it's the
chequered one with the red and blue wheels that the Bayswater ones have got
between them, and that the St. John's Wood and two Western Railway ones are
trying to get into trouble by crossing. What a row! how the ruffians whip,
and stamp, and storm, and all but pick each other's horses' teeth with
their poles, how the cads gesticulate, and the passengers imprecate! now
the bonnets are out of the windows, and the row increases. Six coachmen
cutting and storming, six cads sawing the air, sixteen ladies in flowers
screaming, six-and-twenty sturdy passengers swearing they will 'fine them
all,' and Mr. Sponge is the only cool person in the scene. He doesn't rush
into the throng and 'jump in,' for fear the 'bus should extricate itself
and drive on without him; he doesn't make confusion worse confounded by
intimating his behest; he doesn't soil his bright boots by stepping off the
kerb-stone; but, quietly waiting the evaporation of the steam, and the
disentanglement of the vehicles, by the smallest possible sign in the
world, given at the opportune moment, and a steady adhesion to the flags,
the 'bus is obliged either to 'come to,' or lose the fare, and he steps
quietly in, and squeezes along to the far end, as though intent on going
the whole hog of the journey.