For he sat, an isolating winter stretched miles and miles around him, in the old paradise of his mother's drawing-room, in the glorious twilight of a peat and wood fire, the shadows flickering about at their own wild will over all the magic room, at the feet of a lady, whose eyes were black as the night, but alive with a radiance such as no sun could kindle, whose hand was like warm snow, whose garments were lovely as the clouds that clothe a sunset, and who inhabited an atmosphere of evanescent odours that were themselves dreams from a region beyond the stars, while the darkness that danced with the firelight played all sorts of variations on the theme of her beauty.
How long he had sat lost in the dream-haunted gorgeous silence he did not know, when suddenly he bethought himself that he ought to be doing something to serve or amuse, or at least interest the heavenly visitant.

Strangers and angels must be entertained, nor must the shadow of loneliness fall upon them.

Now to that end he knew one thing always good, always at hand, and specially fitting the time.
"Shall I tell you a story, my lady ?" he said, looking up to her from the low stool on which he had taken his place at her feet.
"Yes, if you please," she answered, finding herself in a shoal of sad thoughts, and willing to let them drift.
"Then I will try.

But I am sorry I cannot tell it so well as Grizzie told it me.

Her old-fashioned way suits the story.