“This time he shouted a little more loudly, and his heart began to beat a little more quickly. It was foolish, of course. There was no chance she could have got lost here.”

“In a whisper he began begging for—and, as the sun set, received—the concession people always beg for: a little more time.”

“That’s a good hustle,” I told him. “We both got a little hustle, don’t we?” He pulled on his jacket. “But I like to think we got more heart.”

“There would therefore have been all the more delight at the birth of the first son William within less than a year of Margaret's death, tinged with more than a little anxiety, in view of the fateful words hic incepit pestis, 'here began plague', in the burial part of the register three months later. Just how close this dread flea-borne disease was to the Shakespeares can be guaged from the fact that their Henley Street neighbour Roger Green lost four of his children and town clerk Richard Symons three. One estimate suggests that the town lost around two hundred, or about fifteen per cent, of its population during this single outbreak. It is a sobering thought how much the world could have lost at this time by one ill-chanced flea-bite.”

“Little less than a promise, and a little more than a chance.”

“How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience would have achieved success? ”