Read the passage below and answer the question. somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. the tone of the excerpt above can best be described as cynical and gloomy lost and lonely childlike and nostalgic confused and meandering

C) childlike and nostalgic.

Explanation: The tone of a text is the author's or speaker's attitude towards the subject, the audience or even the characters of the text. There are many different kinds of tones, for example: happy, sad, angry, positive, negative, objective, etc. In the given passage the speaker is talking about how things were in the past ("Somehow, it was hotter then.."), he uses descriptions of dogs, mules and men's clothes which gives the excerpt a childlike and nostalgic tone.