The correct answer is sadness and poverty.
The color gray and the dust represent sadness and poverty in the story. The “time” of the “Marigolds” best illustrates an explicit example of setting. It is a setting of “time” because un the excerpt it says: “I remember only the dry September of the dirt roads and grassless yards of the shantytown where I lived. I feel again the chaotic emotions of adolescence, illusive as smoke.” And the sadness and poverty are represented by the color gray and the dust.
The other options of the question were, a) happiness and cheerfulness, b) nervousness and anxiety, and c) fright and mystery.