It seems to have dawned upon Mrs. Craigie, not very long after her second marriage, that her daughter was, to use a common expression, running wild. A little discipline, it was felt, would do her good. It was decided to send her home to her stepfather's relatives at Montrose. With screams, sobs, and wild protests, the eight-year-old girl accordingly found herself torn from the redcoats and brown faces that she loved, once more to undertake that terrible four months' journey to a land which she had probably completely forgotten.
The contrast between Calcutta, the gorgeous city of palaces, and Montrose, the dour, wintry burgh among the sandhills by the northern sea, must have chilled the heart of the passionate child. Yet she does not seem in after life to have thought with any bitterness of the place, and speaks with respect, if not affection, of her new guardian, Major Craigie's father. She writes:--
"This venerable man had been provost of Montrose for nearly a quarter of a century, and the dignity of his profession, as well as the great respectability of his family, made every event connected with his household a matter of some public note, and the arrival of the queer, wayward, little East Indian girl was immediately known to all Montrose. The peculiarity of her dress, and I dare say not a little eccentricity in her manners, served to make her an object of curiosity and remark; and very likely she perceived that she was somewhat of a public character, and may have begun, even at this early age, to assume airs and customs of her own."
That is, indeed, very likely. Further information concerning our heroine's stay at Montrose we have little. She does not seem to have retained any very vivid impressions of her childhood. One of the few events in the meagre history of the little Scots town she was privileged to witness--the erection of the suspension bridge from Inchbrayock over the Esk. Here it was, too, that she formed that friendship with the girl, afterwards Mrs. Buchanan, which was destined to form her greatest consolation in the evening of her days. The Craigies were strict Calvinists, and some of her biographers have assumed, in consequence, that they must have treated the child with rigour and inspired her with a distaste for religion. She never said so, as far as I can ascertain. On the contrary, throughout her life she evinced a marked bias in favour of Protestantism, which is quite as compatible with an erotic temperament as was the zeal for Catholicism displayed by the favourite mistress of Charles II.