And Charlotta , as poor Miss Corona knew only too well , was fatally sure to do something unfortunate if she were not under some careful , overseeing eye . To be sure , Charlotta 's intentions were always good . But Miss Corona was not thinking about Charlotta this morning , and she felt so strong a distaste for her lonely , purposeless life that she was in no haste to go forth to meet another day of it . Miss Corona felt just the least little bit tired of living , although she feared it was very wicked of her to feel so . She lay there listlessly for half an hour longer , looking through a mist of tears at the portrait of her stern old father hanging on the wall at the foot of the bed , and thinking over the Quarrel . It had happened thirty years ago , when Miss Corona had been a girl of twenty , living alone with her father at the old Gordon homestead on the hill , with the big black spruce grove behind it on the north and far-reaching slopes of green fields before it on the south . Down in the little northern valley below the spruce grove lived her uncle , Alexis Gordon . His son , Meredith , had seemed to Corona as her own brother . The mothers of both were dead ; neither had any other brother or sister . The two children had grown up together , playmates and devoted friends . There had never been any sentiment or lovemaking between them to mar a perfect comradeship . They were only the best of friends , whatever plans the fathers might have cherished for the union of their estates and children , putting the property consideration first , as the Gordons were always prone to do . But , if Roderick and Alexis Gordon had any such plans , all went by the board when they quarreled . Corona shivered yet over the bitterness of that time . The Gordons never did anything half-heartedly . The strife between the two brothers was determined and irreconcilable . Corona 's father forbade her to speak to her uncle and cousin or to hold any communication with them . Corona wept and obeyed him . She had always obeyed her father ; it had never entered into her mind to do anything else . Meredith had resented her attitude hotly , and from that day they had never spoken or met , while the years came and went , each making a little wider and more hopeless the gulf of coldness and anger and distrust .
Ten years later Roderick Gordon died , and XXXXX five months Alexis Gordon followed him to the grave .
To before between by for in that through while with