Tea is the steady companion of the Scottish day, and each hotel, no matter how humble, stocks its rooms with supplies for brew-ups: electric pot for boiling water, ceramic pot for brewing, china cups and small tea-creamers, a great number of teas, honey, fresh milk, and lemons. This is a delight and astonishment, for not only is there no such thing in American hotels, but room service even in respectable ones, when asked for tea with milk, can deliver a plastic jug of tepid water covered by a square of Saran Wrap, and a drinking glass of milk. To request tea in an American office is often to throw the receptionist into a swivet (狂乱): he or she believes that there is tea somewhere in the corporate foot closet, but where One prefers not to ask rather than to send this person on a scavenger (清道夫) mission, especially because the tea, if found, is a grim bag-tea like Red Rose. It is nearing four o’clock in the afternoon, and sure enough, parked just off the road, overlooking the pungent (刺激性的) tidal flats, we come upon a small caravan camper with its aluminum door open to a late-middle-aged Scottish couple, sitting at a folding table, taking tea and biscuits. Passing by, one only has a glimpse: his thick, white socks and heavy black shoes; her plump pear form and print dress; the electric kettle on the table. The archaeologists are puzzled as to why the people of ancient Skara Brae would locate their huts so close to the sea, and have guessed that in fact the settlement was originally located in a protected hollow, that time has eroded the shoreline inland toward the huts. That would make sense. Indeed, when presented at Skara Brae with the lure of a sparkling sea and the howling wind, we ourselves tucked into the hollow of a dune for lunch, eating cheese and apples in the sun with wind skimming our heads, blowing the sand into rippling ridges, flattening the beach grasses. Probably the archaeologists are right, but this utterly typical sense of Scottish domesticity merrily planted at the edge of harsh cliffs, afternoon tea conducted in the wind and cold, suggests another possibility. We learn from the passage that tea plays ______ in Scottish daily life.