young man--extremely kind and intrusively considerate;
always interesting himself in everybody's
affairs and taking no end of trouble to straighten
them out whether importuned or not--and he seldom
was.

This idiosyncrasy had gained for him during his
college days the title of "Mixey." This in succeeding
years had been merged into "Muddles" and
finally to "Muggles," as being more euphonious and
less insulting. Of late among his intimates he had
been known as "The Goat," due to his constant habit
of butting in at any and all times, a sobriquet which
clings to him to this day.

His real name--the one he inherited from his
progenitors and now borne by his family--was one
that stood high in the fashionable world: a family
that answered to the more dignified and aristocratic
patronymic of Maxwell--a name dating back to the
time of Cromwell, with direct lineage from the Earl
of Clanworthy--john, Duke of Essex, Lord Beverston
--that sort of lineage. No one of the later Maxwells,
it is true, had ever been able to fill the gap of a
hundred years or more between the Clanworthys and
the Maxwells, but a little thing like that never made
any difference to Muggles or his immediate connections.
Was not the family note-paper emblazoned
with the counterfeit presentment of a Stork Rampant
caught by the legs and flopping its wings over a