passage b
#7

1 whatever shock mrs. springer experienced at my aunt's appearance she considerately concealed. myself, i saw my aunt's misshapened figure with that feeling of awe and respect with which we behold explorers who have left their ears and fingers north of franz josef land, or their health somewhere along the upper congo. my aunt georgiana had been a music teacher at the boston conservatory, somewhere back in the latter sixties. one summer, while visiting in the little village among the green mountains where her ancestors had dwelt for generations, she had kindled the callow fancy of the most idle and shiftless of all the village lads, and had conceived for this howard carpenter one of those extravagant passions which a handsome country boy of twenty-one sometimes inspires in an angular, spectacled woman of thirty. when she returned to her duties in boston, howard followed her, and the upshot of this inexplicable infatuation was that she eloped with him, eluding the reproaches of her family and the criticisms of her friends by going with him to the nebraska frontier. carpenter, who, of course, had no money, had taken a homestead in red willow county, fifty miles from the railroad. there they had measured off their quarter section themselves by driving across the prairie in a wagon, to the wheel of which they had tied a red cotton handkerchief, and counting off its revolutions. they built a dugout in the red hillside, one of those cave dwellings whose inmates so often reverted to primitive conditions. their water they got from the lagoons where the buffalo drank, and their slender stock of provisions was always at the mercy of bands of roving indians. for thirty years my aunt had not been further than fifty miles from the homestead.

2 but mrs. springer knew nothing of all this, and must have been considerably shocked at what was left of my kinswoman. beneath the soiled linen duster which, on her arrival, was the most conspicuous feature of her costume, she wore a black stuff dress, whose ornamentation showed that she had surrendered herself unquestioningly into the hands of a country dressmaker. my poor aunt's figure, however, would have presented astonishing difficulties to any dressmaker. originally stooped, her shoulders were now almost bent together over her sunken chest. she wore no stays, and her gown, which trailed unevenly behind, rose in a sort of peak over her abdomen. she wore ill-fitting false teeth, and her skin was yellow from constant exposure to a pitiless wind and to the alkaline water which hardens the most transparent cuticle into a sort of flexible leather.

3 i owed to this woman most of the good that ever came my way in my boyhood, and had a reverential affection for her. during the years when i was riding herd for my uncle, my aunt, after cooking the three meals—the first of which was ready at six o'clock in the morning—and putting the six children to bed, would often stand until midnight at her ironing board, with me at the kitchen table beside her, hearing me recite latin declensions and conjugations, gently shaking me when my drowsy head sank down over a page of irregular verbs. it was to her, at her ironing or mending, that i read my first shakespeare; and her old textbook on mythology was the first that ever came into my empty hands. she taught me my scales and exercises, too—on the little parlor organ, which her husband had bought her after fifteen years, during which she had not so much as seen any instrument, but an accordion that belonged to one of the norwegian farmhands. she would sit beside me by the hour, darning and counting while i struggled with the "joyous farmer," but she seldom talked to me about music, and i understood why. she was a pious woman; she had the consolations of religion and, to her at least, her martyrdom was not wholly sordid. once when i had been doggedly beating out some easy passages from an old score of euryanthe i had found among her music books, she came up to me and, putting her hands over my eyes, gently drew my head back upon her shoulder, saying tremulously, "don't love it so well, clark, or it may be taken from you. oh, dear boy, pray that whatever your sacrifice may be, it be not that."

based on the first paragraph of passage b, one can infer that the narrator:

a.) agrees with aunt georgiana's family's summation of howard carpenter.

b.) believes that aunt georgiana's problems resulted from her .

c.) feels that aristocratic values can have a stifling effect on a person.

d.) thinks that aunt georgiana has made an important contribution to society.