What basic situation on the train provides the frame for the storyteller’s two very different stories?

The conflict that provides the dramatic tension in “The Storyteller” is clearly between the aunt and the bachelor, or more precisely, between the aunt’s rather obvious view that stories told to children require a definite moral and the bachelor’s apparent view that the entertainment value of stories trumps any lesson they might teach. “The Storyteller” thus becomes an example of how dramatic tension created by the conflict between two people can end with one side irrefutably vanquished yet with no physical harm done. The bachelor is the winner in this conflict of opposing ideologies on the most reasonable basis for judgment: the children are enraptured by his story after being left restless and bored by the story told by their aunt.