every occasion that the "spot" rode in his omnibus is a question that occurs to every one who hears the story. In all probability he considered himself a very smart fellow, and it is the fate of people possessed of an exaggerated idea of their own cleverness to make some silly blunder which proves that, after all, they are but fools.
In the forties and fifties several well-dressed women "spots" were employed by the omnibus proprietors, and when a conductor suspected any lady passenger of being one, he generally communicated his suspicion to the coachman, with the result that when she wished to alight, the coachman would pull up in the muddiest part of the road, so that she would be compelled to get her boots and skirt dirty. More often than not it was a perfectly innocent lady whom the conductor left stranded in the centre of a crowded, muddy street. These mistakes are still very common. Conductors are always on the look out for "spots," and every day hundreds of innocent passengers are suspected of being private inspectors because they happen, perhaps unconsciously, to watch the conductor punching tickets or to glance at his badge number.
