For as feisty as Matilda was for the world, she was nothing of her mother’s caliber. It took the loss of a family to steel a woman’s heart that way. Tillie’s underlying softness was probably good, in the long run, but it left her remarkably impressionable to both mother and brother in the ways she was not for any other person. Tillie had not known it to be in her best interest to find a husband and make her own home, which was traditionally unfortunate. At the Bradshaw estate, she was simply petitioning to be everyone’s favorite caged bird and she didn’t even see it.<br/><br/>So, she was dutiful and came when her brother beckoned like a marionette on fine strings. His fingers crooked and she flitted across the floor, past Eugene. Mr. Grant might have saved her, had he been a little bolder a little sooner. Tillie, though, was inevitably a co-conspirator to her own fate. She’d have laughed at any other situation but this. She was a soft blush and furtive smiles when she had come into the crook of Ewan’s arm.<br/><br/>Ada was not so eager to please, nor swayed by her son’s placating attitude. She had raised him, after all. A grown woman watching a boy craft his own will and way. He might have turns she did not know, now, but he would not be able to remove that history. Her stare was sharp and wary as she took the pen. The nib was nearly to the page when Josephine made her announcement and Ewan his protest. It made her pause, and Tillie inhaled a little sharply. “Then you should have thought through your plans a bit more thoroughly, my son.” Ada said, looking up at him from where she’d bent over the desk. There had been a school teacher in Ewan’s youth that wore the same expression when he was difficult. It had been flattering on her, but then she’d gone and died in bearing her first child.<br/><br/>Ada closed her eyes and exhaled through her nose, the sort of resolved patience settling onto her features that said she was unenthralled with his efforts at appeasing her. Tillie made a soft sound, like she had some idea of what might be coming and saw her brother still frustrated at the end of it.<br/><br/>“We should make this a home for us all again, right?” Matilda offered, a bit more earnest than her usual intonations would suggest she was capable. Ada glanced at her daughter wearily. “Let’s go, like Ewan says. Things got off on the wrong foot, because we were startled, I think.” She said to the room, like either brother or mother might need some explanation. Mrs. Bradshaw sighed. She gave her son her hand with all the reluctance a lady of her station was due. How remarkable it was to throw the weight of familial obligation into such a dainty gesture. Tillie smiled anyhow, because it was good for Ewan to make the effort to apologize. Ada left Ewan’s pen on the desk and the documents unsigned.<br/><br/>When they did go to the room and Josephine had scurried off to satisfy Ewan’s request, Ada stood two steps within the doorway with her hand taken back and her arms crossed. “Well, Ewan Bradshaw, exactly what is it you wish to say for yourself?” she asked. It was the same question she’d posed when he’d let a stray dog into the house and they’d consequently lost a fine, woven rug to muddy prints. He had been barely waist high to her then. Ada had not changed much, visibly, from that time. The same could most certainly not be said for the boy with his father’s title.<br/><br/>Tillie squeezed her brother’s hand gently. A light encouragement. Ada was quick to chill and quick to thaw, also. Even the years of fretting might be set aside if Ewan were willing to be a bit sincere. If he was careful to look for it, he might see that Ada was hoping for that kind of resolution, too. No mother particularly wanted to begrudge her child.