This expectation was quite natural and justifiable, for I had inadvertently invited them to meet me, but I could not make a speech to them, for the best of all reasons--that I did not know what to say.

If I told them my real aims, their suspicions would probably be aroused.

My usual stratagem of the weather and the crops was wholly inapplicable.

For a moment I thought of proposing that a psalm should be sung as a means of breaking the ice, but I felt that this would give to the meeting a solemnity which I wished to avoid.

On the whole it seemed best to begin at once a formal discussion.