We hastily proceeded in the direction of the screams, and, guided by the sound, threaded our way into the kitchen.

As we went, Noel, ever fertile in melancholy ideas, said he wondered whether Mrs Pettigrew was being robbed, or only murdered.
In the kitchen we saw that Noel was wrong as usual.

It was neither.

Mrs Pettigrew, screaming like a steam-siren and waving a broom, occupied the foreground.

In the distance the maid was shrieking in a hoarse and monotonous way, and trying to shut herself up inside a clothes-horse on which washing was being aired.
On the dresser--which he had ascended by a chair--was Billy, the acrobatic goat, doing his Alpine daring act.