the thorn birds colleen mccullough

American inflection; he rolled his rather's.
The tea came before everyone settled down again, and oddly
enough it was Herr Hartheim who poured, handing Justine her cup
with a much friendlier look than he had given her at introduction.
"In a British community," he said to her, "afternoon tea is the most
important refreshment of the day. Things happen over teacups, don't
they? I suppose because by its very nature it can be demanded and
taken at almost any time between two and five-thirty, and talking is
thirsty work." The next half hour seemed to prove his point, though
Justine took no part in the congress. Talk veered from the Holy
Father's precarious health to the cold war and then the economic
recession, all four men speaking and listening with an alertness
Justine found absorbing, beginning to grope for the qualities they
shared, even Dane, who was so strange, so much an unknown. He
contributed actively; and it wasn't lost upon her that the three older
men listened to him with a curious humility, almost as if he awed
them. His comments were neither uninformed nor naive, but they
were different, original, holy. Was it for his holiness they paid such
serious attention to him? That he possessed it, and they didn't? Was
it truly a virtue they admired, yearned for themselves? Was it so
rare? Three men so vastly different one from the other, yet far closer
bound together than any of them were to Dane. How difficult it was
to take Dane as seriously as they did! Not that in many ways he
hadn't acted as an older brother rather than a younger; not that she
wasn't aware of his wisdom, his intellect or his holiness. But until
now he had been a part of her world. She had to get used to the fact
that he wasn't anymore.