prepare roast meat or boiled, mix the wine with water, or do any of
those offices which recommended poor men like him to services in great
men's houses.

"Alas! poor guest," said Eumaeus, "you know not what you speak. What
should so poor and old a man as you do at the suitors' tables? Their
light minds are not given to such grave servitors. They must have
youths, richly tricked out in flowing vests, with curled hair, like so
many of Jove's cup-bearers, to fill out the wine to them as they sit
at table, and to shift their trenchers. Their gorged insolence would
but despise and make a mock at thy age. Stay here. Perhaps the queen,
or Telemachus, hearing of thy arrival, may send to thee of their
bounty."

As he spake these words, the steps of one crossing the front court
were heard, and a noise of the dogs fawning and leaping about as for
joy; by which token Eumaeus guessed that it was the prince, who hearing
of a traveller being arrived at Eumaeus's cottage that brought tidings
of his father, was come to search the truth, and Eumaeus said: "It is
the tread of Telemachus, the son of king Ulysses." Before he could
well speak the words, the prince was at the door, whom Ulysses rising
to receive, Telemachus would not suffer that so aged a man, as he
appeared, should rise to do respect to him, but he courteously and
reverently took him by the hand, and inclined his head to him, as if
he had surely known that it was his father indeed: but Ulysses covered
his eyes with his hands, that he might not shew the waters which stood
in them. And Telemachus said, "Is this the man who can tell us tidings
of the king my father?"

"He brags himself to be a Cretan born," said Eumaeus, "and that he has
been a soldier and a traveller, but whether he speak the truth or
not, he alone can tell. But whatsoever he has been, what he is now
is apparent. Such as he appears, I give him to you; do what you will
with him; his boast at present is that he is at the very best a
supplicant."

"Be he what he may," said Telemachus, "I accept him at your hands. But
where I should bestow him I know not, seeing that in the palace his
age would not exempt him from the scorn and contempt which my mother's
suitors in their light minds would be sure to fling upon him. A mercy
if he escaped without blows: for they are a company of evil men, whose
profession is wrongs and violence."

Ulysses answered: "Since it is free for any man to speak in presence
of your