Sometimes the "young missus"—she was really young, being still in her teens—attempted a little gardening on her own account, as when she planted crocus bulbs on a grassy bank facing the drawing-room windows. She had hoped that Williams would not notice them, as that bank was never mown till well on in the spring. But Williams not only noted but disapproved their very earliest appearance. "A grass bank be a grass bank," he asserted, "and bulbs a-growing be out of place," so he mowed the grass assiduously and the crocuses came to nought. "He really is a most aggravating man," exclaimed the young missus; "he won’t let one have a thing one wants." However, the absolute monarchy of Williams was not destined to continue. Even as he had ruled his master and mistress there arose another who ruled not only them but Williams also. Where the young missus had meekly suggested that certain things might be done in such a way as they never were done, this personage had but to point a diminutive forefinger in the direction of anything he coveted when Williams would hasten to procure it for him with the greatest alacrity. He was not of imposing stature, this new autocrat. When he first began to tyrannise over Williams, he stood just about as high as that worthy’s knee, and his walk, in its uncertainty, strongly resembled that of Williams himself on the night of the last election, when the Tory candidate was returned by a majority of two votes. But to return to the autocrat. He certainly interfered with Williams’s work, causing him to waste whole hours in hovering about near the drive gate that he might catch a glimpse of his equipage as he set out for an airing in a fine white coach propelled by a white-clad attendant. Williams would not have been averse from occasional parleyings with the attendant. She was young and pretty; but she had other and more lively fish to fry, and would have scorned to do more than exchange the most formal of passing courtesies with "that there deaf old gardener"—who, however, was never so deaf but that the clear little voice calling "_Wee_-ams" attracted immediate attention.