When the evening had come, and the guests had gone to their own homes, Odysseus sat upon a low stool at his mother's feet, while she asked him many questions about her aged sire Autolycus, and about the dear home of her girlhood on the farther side of Mount Parnassus. And he told her of all that she asked him, and of the wonderful things that he had seen and heard in far-away lands and seas.
"But were you not afraid that evil would befall you, and that your eyes would never more behold fair Ithaca?" asked his mother, tenderly stroking his yellow hair.
"Nightly I prayed to Pallas Athené," answered the lad, "and she watched kindly over me every hour. Who would be afraid when shielded and led by so great a friend? Then, too, good Phemius questioned the Pythian oracle about me; and the answer was such as to make me sure of safety. It was this:--
'To home and kindred he shall safe return ere long, With scars well-won, and greeted with triumphal song.'"
"Well," said Laertes, "the oracle doubtless spoke the truth. We know that you have returned to your home, and that you have been greeted with songs, but I fear you have yet to gain the scars."
"Not so, father," answered Odysseus. And then he showed them the great white scar which the tusk of the wild boar had made upon his knee; and he told them of the famous hunt in the woods of Parnassus, and of the days of pain and enforced quiet which he had afterward spent on an invalid's couch. And all those who listened to his story were struck with the wisdom of his thoughts; and they wondered at the choice beauty of the words which fell from his lips, soft and persuasive like the flakes of snow on a quiet day in winter.
After this, many pleasant days came and passed. The simple-hearted folk of Ithaca went about their tasks as of yore,--some tending their flocks in the mountain pastures, some gathering the autumn fruits from the overladen trees, and some twirling the spindle or plying the loom in their humble homes. King Laertes himself worked early and late in his vineyards or in his well-tilled orchard grounds; and Odysseus was often with him, as busy as he, tending his own trees and vines. For, long time before, when he was but a little child, the boy had walked through these grounds with his father, and had asked the names of the trees. And Laertes had not only answered the prattler, but had given him a whole small orchard for his own: of pear trees, thirteen; of apple trees, ten; of fig trees, forty; and he promised to give him fifty rows of vines, each of which ripened at a different time, with all manner of clusters on their boughs.