"Wot is?"
"All that traffic!"
"Ow, thet's nothink. We think nothink of thet owver 'ere," the driver replied. "We down't tyke no notice of a little lot like thet!"
The conductor rang his bell, and the driver whipped up his horses, and the 'bus proceeded on its way.
John remembered that he had not heard any witticisms from the driver. Uncle Matthew had told him that one could always depend upon a 'busman to provide comic entertainment, but this man, although, after a while, he had become talkative enough, had not said one funny thing. He had not chaffed a policeman or a footpassenger or another 'busman, and now that they had passed away from the Elephant and Castle, his conversation seemed to have dried up. The 'bus tooled through the Newington Butts, along the Borough High Street (past the very inn where Mr. Pickwick first met Sam Weller, although John was then unaware that he was passing it) and under the railway bridge at St. Saviour's Cathedral Church of Southwark.
"What's that place?" John said to the driver, pointing to the Cathedral.
"Eih? Ow, thet! Thet's a cathedral!"
"A cathedral! Hidden away like that!..."
A hideous railway bridge cramped St. Saviour's on one side, and hideous warehouses and offices cramped it on the other. There was a mess of vegetable debris lying about the Cathedral pavement, the refuse from the Borough Market.
"What cathedral is it?" John demanded.