Three or four smart-looking damsels in caps looked in while I was engaged in my toilet, and this, with one or two slight observations made in the apartment, convinced me that I had intruded on the dormitory of the ladies’ maids belonging to the various parties in the house. A hurried “God bless us!” as they retreated, however, was all either of reproach or remonstrance that I was troubled with; and I emerged with a smooth chin in time for breakfast, very much to the envy and surprise of my less-enterprising companions.
There was a great scramble for the tea and toast; but uniting forces with a distinguished literary man whose acquaintance I had been fortunate enough to make on board the the steamer, we managed to get places at one of the tables, and achieved our breakfasts in tolerable comfort. We were still eight miles from Eglington, however, and a lodging was the next matter of moment. My friend thought he was provided for nearer the castle, and I went into the street, which I found crowded with distressed looking people, flying from door to door, with ladies on their arms and wheelbarrows of baggage at their heels, the townspeople standing at the doors and corners staring at the novel spectacle in open-mouthed wonder. Quite in a dilemma whether or not to go on to Irvine (which, being within two miles of the castle, was probably much more over-run than Ardrossan) I was standing at the corner of the street, when a Liverpool gentleman, whose kindness I must record as well as my pleasure in his society for the two or three days we were together, came up and offered me a part of a lodging he had that moment taken. The bed was what we call in America a _bunk_, or a kind of berth sunk into the wall, and there were two in the same garret, but the sheets were clean; and there was a large Bible on the table—the latter a warrant for civility, neatness, and honesty, which, after many years of travel, I have never found deceptive. I closed immediately with my friend; and whether it was from a smack of authorship or no, I must say I took to my garret very kindly.
It was but nine o’clock, and the day was on my hands. Just beneath the window ran a railroad, built to bring coal to the seaside, and extending to within a mile of the castle; and with some thirty or forty others, I embarked in a horse-car for Eglinton to see the preparations for the following day’s tournament. We were landed near the park gate, after an hour’s drive through a flat country blackened with coal pits; and it was with no little relief to the eye that I entered upon a smooth and gravelled avenue, leading by a mile of shaded windings to the castle. The day was heavenly; the sun-flecks lay bright as “patines of gold” on the close-shaven grass beneath the trees; and I thought that nature had consented for once to remove her eternal mist veil from Scotland, and let pleasure and sunshine have a holiday together. The sky looked hard and deep; and I had no more apprehension of rain for the morrow than I should have had under a July sun in Asia.