"There is no work to-day," cried one, overturning the sewing-basket with
the tip of her shoe.

"That is the same as saying, to-morrow there is to be no eating," said
the eldest, gathering up the sewing implements.

Pepe Rey instinctively put his hand into his pocket. He would gladly
have given them an alms. The spectacle of these poor orphans, condemned
by the world because of their frivolity, saddened him beyond measure.
If the only sin of the Troyas, if the only pleasure which they had
to compensate them for solitude, poverty, and neglect, was to throw
orange-peels at the passers-by, they might well be excused for doing
it. The austere customs of the town in which they lived had perhaps
preserved them from vice, but the unfortunate girls lacked decorum and
good-breeding, the common and most visible signs of modesty, and
it might easily be supposed that they had thrown out of the window
something more than orange-peels. Pepe Rey felt profound pity for
them. He noted their shabby dresses, made over, mended, trimmed, and
retrimmed, to make them look like new; he noted their broken shoes--and
once more he put his hand in his pocket.

"Vice may reign here," he said to himself, "but the faces, the
furniture, all show that this is the wreck of a respectable family. If
these poor girls were as bad as it is said they are, they would not
live in such poverty and they would not work. In Orbajosa there are rich
men."

The three girls went back and forward between him and the window,
keeping up a gay and sprightly conversation, which indicated, it must