Caroline's coolness, her capableness, her general success, especially
exasperated people because they felt that she had made herself what
she was; that she had cold-bloodedly set about complying with the
demands of life and making her position comfortable and masterful. That
was why, everyone said, she had married Howard Noble Women who did
not get through life so well as Caroline, who could not make such good
terms either with fortune or their husbands, were fond of stamping
Caroline as a materialist and called her hard
The impression of cold calculation, of having a definite policy, which
Caroline gave, was far from a false one, but there was this to be said for
her-that there were extenuating circumstances which her friends could
not know
If Caroline held determinedly to the middle course, if she was apt to
regard with distrust everything which inclined toward extravagance, it was
not because she was unacquainted with other standards than her own or
had never seen the other side of life. She had grown up in a shabby little
house under the vacillating administration of her father, a music teacher
who usually neglected his duties to write orchestral compositions for
which the world seemed to have no especial need. His spint was warped
by bitter vindictiveness and puerile self-commiseration, and he spent his
days in scom of the labor that brought him bread and in pitiful devotion to
the labor that brought him only disappointment
After her mother's death, Caroline assumed the management of that
bankrupt establishment, and she was barely twenty when she was called
upon to face this tangle of difficulties. The house had served its time at
the shine of idealism; ever since Caroline could remember, the law of the
house had been sort of a mystic worship of things distant, intangible, and
unattainable, and the family in successive flares of generous
enthusiasm, in talk of master and masterpieces, only to come down to
the cold facts of the case. All these emotional pyrotechnics had ended in
petty jealousies, in neglected duties, and in cowardly fear of the little
grocer on the comer
Which detail best shows that Caroline is a responsible person?
A.She distrusts everything that seems extravagant or expensive.
B. She takes over running the household after her mother's death.
C.She knows how to make her position comfortable and masterful.
D.She deals with difficulties such as paying the bills from grocers.
