What is the author’s purpose in including paragraphs 2-6?
a) to describe what the leaflet was claiming it could do
b) to make the reader aware that it was illegal to distribute such propaganda in public
c) to draw similarities between the leaflet and other religious pamphlets peter had been given
d) to build suspense and internal conflict since neither the reader nor peter knew the content of the leaflet

A young man is walking down the street, quite casually, with an empty mind and no set purpose; he comes to a crossing, and for no reason that he could tell he takes the right hand turn instead of the left; and so it happens that he encounters a blue-eyed girl, who sets his heart to beating. He meets the girl, marries her--and she became your mother. But now, suppose the young man had taken the left hand turn instead of the right, and had never met the blue-eyed girl; where would you be now, and what would have become of those qualities of mind which you consider of importance to the world, and those grave affairs of business to which your time is devoted?

2 Something like that it was which befell Peter Gudge. Peter was walking down the street one afternoon, when a woman approached and held out to him a printed leaflet. "Read this, please," she said. And Peter, who was hungry, and at odds with the world, answered gruffly: "I got no money." He thought it was an advertising dodger, and he said: "I can't buy nothin'."

3 "It isn't anything for sale," answered the woman. "It's a message."

4 "Religion?" said Peter. "I just got kicked out of a church."

5 "No, not a church," said the woman. "It's something different; put it in your pocket."

6 "Read it some time when you've nothing else to do." And so Peter, just to get rid of her, took the leaflet and thrust it into his pocket, and went on, and in a minute or two had forgotten all about it.

7 Peter was thinking that this was a heck of a life. Who could have foreseen that just because he had stolen one miserable fried doughnut, he would lose his easy job and his chance of rising in the world? Peter's whole being was concentrated on the effort to rise in the world; to get success, which means money, which means ease and pleasure.

8 But who could have foreseen that Mrs. Smithers would have kept count of those fried doughnuts every time anybody passed thru her pantry? And it was only that one ridiculous circumstance which had brought Peter to his present misery. But for that he might have had his lunch of bread and dried herring and weak tea in the home of the shoe-maker's wife, and might have still been busy with his job of stirring up dissension in the First Apostolic Church.

9 Always it had been like that, thru Peter's twenty years of life. Time after time he would get his feeble clutch fixed upon the ladder of prosperity, and then something would happen--some wretched thing like the stealing of a fried doughnut--to pry him loose and tumble him down again into the pit of misery.

10 So Peter walked along, with his belt drawn tight, and his restless blue eyes wandering here and there, looking for a place to get a meal. There were jobs to be had, but they were hard jobs, and Peter wanted an easy one. There are people in this world who live by their muscles, and others who live by their wits; Peter belonged to the latter class; and had missed many a meal rather than descend in the social scale.

To build suspense and internal conflict since neither the reader nor Peter knew the content of the leaflet

Option D.

Explanation:

The content of the leaflet was known by none. Neither Peter and nor the reader knew that what was included in the leaflet which was a very important thing.

So the author included the paragraph from 2 to 6 to build suspense among the readers about the content of the leaflet. So they should be very curious to know the content and keep reading the story and the lesson to get to know.

if flooding were to go unchecked, steel support beams in buildings would rust.

i agree, i think a best suits this answer.