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Updated: May 18, 2025
Out of doors it must be as cold as ever, but the room is growing rapidly warmer, and Doretta, climbing on a chair, has the satisfaction of announcing that the mercury has risen eleven degrees. "Yes, dear," her father replies, "and the clock is striking eleven too. Run and tell them to get breakfast ready." Doretta runs off obediently, but reappears in a moment.
"There is a good fire, but the room is cold," she exclaims. As a matter of fact, the window having stood open for half an hour, the thermometer indicates but fifty degrees. "Papa," Doretta goes on, "I want to stay with you all day long to-day." "And suppose your poor daddy has affairs of his own to attend to?" "No, no, you must give them up for to-day."
Signor Odoardo, leaning against the stove, watches his daughter with a smile. It appears that at last Doretta has discovered a way of beginning her letter, for she re-plunges the pen into the inkstand, lowers her hand to the sheet of paper, wrinkles her forehead and sticks out her tongue.
"Now you are talking foolishly," Signor Odoardo admonishes her in a severe tone, setting her down from his knee. She bursts into passionate weeping. "Come, Doretta, come...Is this the way you keep your daddy company?...Enough of this, Doretta." But, say what he pleases, Doretta must have her cry. Her brown eyes are swimming in tears, her little breast heaves, her voice is broken by sobs.
"Good-bye, Doretta," he answers, stooping to kiss a pretty little maid of eight or nine; and at the same instant Signora Evelina calls out from over the way: "Good-morning, Doretta!" Doretta, who had made a little grimace on discovering her papa in conversation with his pretty neighbor, makes another as she hears herself greeted, and mutters reluctantly, "Good-morning."
How completely the cloud has vanished that darkened her brow a few hours earlier! And how well she acquits herself of her household duties! Signor Odoardo, watching her with a sense of satisfaction, cannot resist exclaiming: "Bravo, Doretta!" Doretta is undeniably the very image of her mother. She too was just such an excellent housekeeper, a model of order, of neatness, of propriety.
And yet he is not sure of resisting Signora Evelina's wiles; he is almost afraid that, when he sees his enchantress on the morrow, all his strong resolves may take flight. There is but one way out of it. "Doretta," says Signor Odoardo. "Father?" "Are you going to copy out your letter to your grandmamma this evening?" "Yes, father." "Wouldn't you rather go and see your grandmamma yourself?"
But what does Doretta care for the comments of the kitchen? She is beside herself with joy. She sings, she dances about the room, and breaks off every moment or two to give her father a kiss. Then she pours out the fulness of her emotion upon the cat Melanio and the doll Nini, promising the latter to bring her back a new frock from Milan.
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