Then Pelle got into his apron and buckled on the knee-strap.
Everybody was bending over his work, and Master Andres was reading;
no sound was to be heard but those produced by the workers, and now
and again a word of reprimand from the journeyman.

Every second afternoon, about five o'clock, the workshop door would
open slightly, and a naked, floury arm introduced the newspaper and
laid it on the counter. This was the baker's son, Soren, who never
allowed himself to be seen; he moved about from choice like a thief
in the night. If the master--as he occasionally did--seized him and
pulled him into the workshop, he was like a scared faun strayed from
his thickets; he would stand with hanging head, concealing his eyes,
and no one could get a word from him; and when he saw an opportunity,
he would slip away.

The arrival of the newspaper caused quite a small commotion in the
workshop. When the master felt inclined, he would read aloud--of
calves with two heads and four pairs of legs; of a pumpkin that
weighed fifty pounds; of the fattest man in the world; of fatalities
due to the careless handling of firearms, or of snakes in Martinique.
The dazzling wonder of the whole world passed like a pageant,
filling the dark workshop; the political news was ignored. If the
master happened to be in one of his desperate humors, he would read
the most damnable nonsense: of how the Atlantic Ocean had caught
fire, so that the people were living on boiled codfish; or how the
heavens had got torn over America, so that angels fell right on to
somebody's supper-tray. Things which one knew at once for lies--and
blasphemous nonsense, too, which might at any time have got him
into trouble. Rowing people was not in the master's line, he was