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 spirit was warped by bitter
vindictiveness and puerile self-commiseration, and he spent his days in scorn 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 corner.
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.
