I believe the answer is: “It is better that a few should perish than that the whole city should be destroyed,”
Pay attention to this line:
"<em>what have we done that you should wish thus to destroy us from the earth?"</em>
At this point, we can infer that the King hasn't fully made up his mind on whether he should destroy them or not.
When the elders reply with this line:
<em>“It is better that a few should perish than that the whole city should be destroyed,” </em>
The elders basically advance the plot by convincing the king that the act of destroying some of His people is correct.
B. looking lustfully at
Ogling is a word more than often used for surprise or lecherous tendencies by a character
If the story would have been from Laurie's perspective, A. The audience would have been afraid of Laurie's mother because Laurie is so afraid of her, and C. The audience might have known that Laurie was misbehaving at school and making up the "Charles" character to mislead his mother.
It is clear that Laurie is afraid of his mother, he wouldn't have invented Charles to cover up for his misbehaving otherwise. This fear would have appear in the story, as well as the truth of his behaviour.
