Telemachos hides the weaponry so the suitors can't get to it later. Penelope sits with Odysseus to ask him his story. He refuses to name where he's from, but does consent to tell his history. The story he invents this time is slightly different, and he focuses on where "he" had met Odysseus on his way to the war. Penelope asks for a description, and he of course gives a perfect description of the very clothes Penelope had given to him. Finally tells of the trials (he heard) on Odysseus's voyage home: the loss of his last companions on Thrinakia, the landing on the island of the Phaiakians. [He doesn't mention his time with Circe, nor with Kalypso.]
Penelope offers a foot massage, given by Eurykleia, Odysseus's own nurse from long ago. She recognizes a scar on his knee he received on a boar hunt as a child. (He bagged the boar.) She cries out, but Athene distracts Penelope. Odysseus, meanwhile, threatens to kill her if she tells anybody. She offers to rat out the women of the household who have been mutinous against Odysseus. He says he'll find them out himself.
Penelope returns, still in sorrow over the reminders of Odysseus the conversation with the "stranger" have stirred in her. She relates a recent dream: "Twenty geese in the house feed on my grain and water. An eagle swoops in and kills them all. I cry over the geese, but the eagle returns, saying, 'Have no fear. The geese are the suitors, but I am your husband, returned.' What could this mean?" [How stupid is she?] Odysseus: "Of course this means your husband is on his way back, as we speak, and he shall kill the evil suitors." Penelope, still not convinced, ponders setting up an archery contest to finally determine which suitor she shall marry. Odysseus encourages her to do so immediately, expecting her husband to arrive and win. Penelope to bed.
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