阅读理解。
Tea drinking was common in China for nearly one thousand years before anyone in Europe had ever
heard about tea . People in Britain were much slower in finding out what tea was like , mainly because
tea was very expensive . It could not be bought in shops and even those people who could afford to have
it sent from Holland did so only because it was a fashionable curiosity . Some of them were not sure how
to use it . They thought it was a vegetable and tried cooking the leaves . Then they served them mixed
with butter and salt . They soon discovered their mistake but many people used to spread the used tea
leaves on bread and give them to their children as sandwiches .
Tea remained scarce and very expensive in England until the ships of the East India Company began
to bring it direct from China early in the seventeenth century . During the next few years so much tea came
into the country that the price fell and many people could afford to buy it .
At the same time people on the Continent were becoming more and more fond of tea . Until then tea
had been drunk without milk in it , but one day a famous French lady named Madame de Sevigne
decided to see what tea tasted like when milk was added . She found it so pleasant that she would never
again drink it without milk . Because she was such a great lady that her friends thought they must copy
everything she did ,they also drank their tea with milk in it . Slowly this habit spread until it reached
England and today only very few Britons drink tea without milk .
At first , tea was usually drunk after dinner in the evening . No one ever thought of drinking tea in the
afternoon until a duchess (公爵夫人) found that a cup of tea and a piece of cake at three or four o'clock
stopped her getting "a sinking feeling" as she called it . She invited her friends to have this new meal with
her and so , tea-time was born .
1. This passage mainly discusses .
A. the history of tea drinking in Britain
B. how tea became a popular drink in Britain
C. how the Britons got the habit of drinking tea
D. how tea-time was born
2. Tea became a popular drink in Britain .
A. in the eighteenth century
B. in the sixteenth century
C. in the seventeenth century
D. in the late seventeenth century
3. People in Europe began to drink tea with milk because .
A. it tasted like milk
B. it tasted more pleasant
C. it became a popular drink
D. Madame de Sevinge was such a lady with great social influence that people tried to copy
the way she drank tea
4. We may infer from the passage that the habit of drinking tea in Britain was mostly due to the
influence of .
A. a famous French lady
B. the ancient Chinese
C. the upper social class
D. people in Holland
